There's nothing wrong with Sarah Palin. She's just doing what she was born to do. Alaskans are different from you and me. Can you live there? Neither can I. Alaskans are rugged individualists who don't give a rat's ass what you think of them.

Palin is the first sexually attractive American woman to run for office of Vice President of the United States. The men (and women) who adore her are in love with her; and so were those "losers." Her limited intellect has nothing to do with the fact that every single man who meets her, whether politician, entertainer or media person, has the same thought in his head.

I predict she will get a conservative television contract that will put Limbaugh to shame.

I share your thoughts, Anamoly. And what better time for this "heartbreaking" soap opera to occur than during a period when so many people are focussed on their own heartbreaking problems.

The media know this. We can count on them to wring every last drop of blood ad nausea from this human tragedy. If only people would realize there is only one real sin and that sin is to break a human heart. As I see it, there are two broken and one bleeding. No one should feel any joy from this.

Sounds like this mysogenist wishes he could write like Norman Mailer. No, wait. He wishes he WAS Norman Mailer.

“Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”… Sang Professor Henry Higgins when referring to cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady.”

Now these characters came from Britain’s great literary genius, George Bernard Shaw in his play, Pygmalion. And despite their wealth of female talent, rightfully quoted by others above, Great Britain has always been a male dominant society. And with a few exceptions so are most of the world’s cultures—including ours.

Britain's class culture put women in the drawing room. Even the not so rich had servants. In America women were put to work——hard work, housework, farm work. No nannies for the kiddies. Maybe that's why our British cousins produced so many extraordinary women writers ahead of the Americans.

The 19th century French novelist with a long name and many pseudonyms——George Sand, G. Sand——didn’t care what gender people branded her. She had many husbands, dozens of lovers including Frederick Chopin, and she wrote tons of successful novels, short stories, memoirs, essays. She was considered one of France's best writers of her generation. Does any French man or woman care today?

The question of The Great American Novel whether written by a man or a woman has become a cliché. Who is to say that an American author has or has not yet written it? And if so, what difference does it make whether it was or is a man or a woman? Jabs at Hemingway’s misogyny and the way he lived his life is ridiculous. I have learned so much about writing from him. He was not a phony. He wrote the way he lived, and that is more than you can say about people who just sleepwalk through life. If you can write like Hemingway and forget about his personal faults you will have accomplished something meaningful.

The Great American Novel sits out there like some unattainable level of consciousness, if it even exists. Sure a woman can write it; sure a man can write it. And when you’re dead, who the hell cares.

Thank you Heather. Samantha Brown doesn't pretend to be anything but a terrific travel personality to whom everything is a wonderful surprise. Pompous asses like Bourdain, who acts like he is the first human to have traveled the globe with the all-knowing wisdom of where to find the best eats, is a boring television phony. And many so-called gourmet chefs are too.

Anyone who lived abroad, any seasoned traveler knows that the best food in foreign places is not where the tourists go. Same is true right here in the USA. I recently attended the most ritzy exclusive wedding ever, at the Naples, Florida Ritz Carlton. We had to stay overnight and could not afford the hotel. Now the food at the Ritz Carlton was splendid. But we found the best small motel nearby that was next door to the best little restaurant with the best (real) home cooking in town. What is the definition of gourmet? Fancy or original?