Few if any are asking the right questions about John McCain.

First, a bit of history:

He was a well-documented hothead before he even got his wings. He was a poor pilot until he got shot down. He suffered a good deal of both physical and emotional* damage at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors. He ditched a badly injured first wife to marry a wealthier woman. He was a central figure in the Keating Five scandal. He's demonstrably been on every side of any issue he runs across during his elected-office working life.

Now...

Why is his judgment so poor with respect to many significant life choices?

Why does he show little if any sign of being able to learn from experience?

Is this the character we'd really want in a leader?

Does he possess the physical, and more importantly, the emotional* stability and resilience needed in what may well be the most demanding job in the world?

* I prefer "emotional" to "psychological", especially when referring to visibly damaged candidates like McCain, as psychological connotes some sort of fusty, academic treatise, where emotional points more towards a "Maury Povich Show" type of personality - you know, one that will (as he has) scream curses at his fellows on the Senate floor. Points him out as the unstable person I see him as at his core.

Do you actually know any of Tony Bourdain's work?

I doubt it, because you looked only at the surface - the cartoonish persona. Beneath that exterior resides an extraordinarily thoughtful, well-balanced, dare I say warm human being.

That you prefer to disparage the beer-drinking, (former) cigarette-slinging, and attitude says a lot more about you than it does Bourdain.

Here, if you are up to it, is a challenge: Go read Kitchen Confidential, Cooks' Tour, and No Reservations, (and I don't mean skim them) and then tell me you have the same superficial impression of the man.

If in fact you then do, I'll know that your letter was truly all about you, not Bourdain. Personally, I'll take his writing (and his show) any day. With a side of Nueske's, please...

Is that not the time when most men begin graying some?

And even with that taken into account, can anyone tell me why this matters?

I have never been an athlete. True, I enjoyed a few things as a participant when I was younger. And I appreciate some now that I am graying and know that still trying to be a participant would likely result in unpleasant injuries.

And Jennifer, you are no longer an athlete. Now, you are only a bitter woman who can't let go of her former pursuits. I hope your children do not bear the weight of your bitterness and frustrations. The potential for that is there, of course, as you seem to relish going back over your earlier days and reveling in the suffering others - and you - inflicted on yourself.

And I have, in my professional life, encountered many elite athletes (I will mention no names), and elites in other areas of enterprise, and one thing runs true: The very best of the class of any field are universally also solid, complete human beings, with real understanding of life beyond their own skins.

It is only the almost-weres who base their entire lives on their own selves. You will forever occupy that class.

I don't claim to be an elite anything. I'm just a guy who is good enough at what he does to make a reasonable living at it, and who has a good enough education to be able to understand that there are things beyond my own self and my own life that I can appreciate while never being able to aspire to them in any real way. So I'll continue to watch NCAA and NBA basketball, and remain a Cub fan, and watch the Olympics, and understand that these are all people with very rarefied talents, who have spent uncountable hours turning those talents into amazing skills, and in the bargain, been able to suppress the nerves many if not all of us have at performing literally anything in front of an audience of strangers. And I will marvel at all of that.

And I will spare not one more minute beyond writing this thinking about your bitter, lonely, self-centered simulacrum of an adult life.

Many years ago, longer than I care to number, an utterly mediocre Scotch whisky distiller (Johnnie Walker - Black Label in this instance) ran one of the best print advertisements I've ever seen. Solid black background, a small product shot, and one line of white font in the middle of the page: "When you've really arrived, you don't have to shout about it."

Jennifer, you nearly arrived. Now will you please stop shouting?

And what we are seeing here is the natural outgrowth of our ever-more-populous and ever-more-noisy world - the insistence that we are not lost in the crowd, that there is something so utterly unique about each and every one of us that no one can possibly comprehend our individual importance.

BS.

99.9999999% of each of us is, in practical terms, identical to everyone else who ever drew a breath. Thinking otherwise exemplifies the term "egregious".

Stressing those differentiations is what makes us the fragmented society (world, even) we are today. If that does not change, if we don't get beyond that, it bodes poorly for the future.

And I thought Sey was classless. True, she's a whiny, self-absorbed never-quite-was.

You, on the other hand, are a repellent, sexist jerk. That's the sort of thing John McCain said about his wife in public (in front of three reporters, no less!) and is rightly regarded as a jerk for it - and other reasons. Congrats - you're now in his (minor) league.