It appears that this topic engenders a great deal of self-righteousness among people who think that stupid poor people are eating themselves to death. These arguments are as foolish as they are mean-spirited.

Anyone who suggests that we should all go down to "the ghetto" (an Archie Bunker anachronism, if there ever was one) to look at all the fat people simply likes to vent his prejudices as fact. All Americans are, on average, fatter than we used to be. As much of this is due to affluence as poverty.

Waxing nostalgic for the good ol' days, when we lived close to the earth is a hoary lie, unless you happened to be either very old or from an extremely small subset of the population, which has become overwhelmingly urban/suburban/ex-urban. The rural pastorale is great fiction, but most of us weren't farmers or even raised close to farms.

With the average family (of 4) income in the U.S. hovering around $48,000, that would leave about $30,000 after taxes. Ten percent of that would be only $3,000. Show me a family that can feed itself, healthfully, on $3,000/year, and I'll show you a statistical anomally. You won't find them dining on prissy, pricey eggs.

It is also the case that the middle of our median income curve is slumping, with the very rich and the very poor lifting up the upper and lower slopes. So the median is less and less representative of the normal distribution. Since very wealthy people are unlikely to use 10% of their incomes on food (unless they really do sit around eating gold-encrusted hummingbirds), then the real burden of the food budget must fall ever more severely on people who have less and less income.

Get a heart, folks. The American diet does suck, but the answer is NOT making everyone pay exhorbitant amounts for basic foods. Agricultural reform is laudable, even deeply moral, but it cannot be had at the expense of the poor.

According to The Pew Research Center, Americans are quick to judge the obesity of the general population, while finding it less apparent in themselves or the people they know.

The survey finds that most Americans, including those who say they are overweight, agree that personal behavior - rather than genetic disposition or marketing by food companies - is the main reason people are overweight. In particular, the public says that a failure to get enough exercise is the most important reason, followed by a lack of willpower about what to eat. About half the public also says that the kinds of foods marketed at restaurants and grocery stores are a very important cause, and roughly a third say the same about the effect of genetics and heredity.

Amazing how this argument plays out in such predictable ways, here on Salon and throughout the populace. We find it easy to vent our disgust on people we don't know (from other social strata, ethnic groups, or -- heaven forbid -- classes), while congratulating ourselves and the enlightened company we keep.

The full study can be reached through the Pew Research Center site, at pewresearch.org.

Yep, it's hard work knowin' everthin', but ya gotta do it, 'cause a feller's gotta decide -- be the decider, and if ya don't be the decider yourself, then You Know Who is gonna be The Decider for ya!

I read "Nocturne for the King of Naples" when it first appeared on the shelves of Lambda Rising Book Store, in Washington, D.C. I still have the first edition.

That book, in its reveries of prose, enchanted me beyond imagination. When I later collected a few poems into a slim volume, I boldly sent one off to Edmund White, since I had used a quote from "Nocturnes" as an epigraph. To my astonishment, he became a gentle correspondent and even something of an occasional mentor. Excitements have been his stock-in-trade, for many years.

"Forgetting Elena" still haunts me in ways that I will never reconcile. It's fantasy has, more than once, taken over my dreams and so thoroughly gulled me that I came near to losing myself in its speculations. No other book has ever had that effect on me.

We are not really a culture of letters or liberal arts, anymore, if we ever were. Nabokov shrewdly held up the mirror to our cultural vacuity. White refracts our world still further, and in the most delightfully adept prose imaginable.

Ah, to be a young man, again, and have the luck to stumble onto such excitements, once more.

I hate to be a Cassandra, but Bush is hardly showing his hand, here. He brings everyone into the oval office and pretends to listen; then, he pretends to be a broker of compromise; yet, somehow, he never says what he is favoring or whether he will insist on the passage of anything in particular. That's a gift horse that we need to look firmly in the mouth!

As for his overall approach to immigration reform, it seems to be perfectly consistent with the objective of giving his robber-baron brethren access to cheap, temporary labor. The promise of citizenship is reserved only for the currently resident, not the future overstayers (which is the only rational outcome of a "guestworker" program). Why will future guest workers just pack their bags and leave after we've finished working them for the period of their informal (?) indenture?

So, whatare we supposed to applaud? We simply postpone for another generation the legalization of the next batch of underclass, illegal residents, while exploiting their vulnerability. It's just the sequel, not the solution.

The Senate bill, though couched in all sorts of fuzzy warm words, fails to confront any of the problems brought about by our current, unsuccessful policies. This is not statemanship but political gamesmanship. It is ridiculous to hold it up as the torch of a new New Colossus.