Hi, all. I weighed in a long time ago on how much I disliked this piece. That said, I don't agree with most of the freeper invasion, either.

I won't bother sharing my bona fides. The important issue for me, though, is that I don't believe red state and blue state america are all that different. In most places, and in almost all of our political parties are people who are engaged in the business of living their lives and being compassionate to each other, helping out their neighbors and all that stuff that is important to our long-term unity and happiness. I don't think those people deserve political baiting, or Ms. Burleigh's essay, which unfortunately cast her personal issues in very conflicted and very divisive terms.

Salon, you can do better. and so can people such as Rush Limbaugh who profit from a nation divided.

Most churches have a "crying room," which is a more or less soundproof box/room with a glass window facing into the church proper. That way, kids can play with toys and their moms can care for them, they can hear everything that's being said, and yet they can't disrupt the service. If theaters really want to be kinder to moms and to the rest of us, they'll construct some of these. But meanwhile, please don't subsidize the presence of very young children in inappropriate places!

No Name, I concur. My old office was an all-woman shop and there was a major cultural difference between me and my 30ish coworkers and the 24 year-olds who we hired in later. Namely, the 24 year-olds rarely put in a full 40 hours, weren't dependable, usually dressed like hookers, and demanded raises constantly, for whatever reason believing that they should make more than the amount they already weren't earning. One used to write lengthy lovelorn letters to her scumbag boyfriend, which she then saved on the central drive for my (unintended) amusement, when she wasn't wasting hours IM-ing. Her grammar was appalling, her work ethic pathetic, and her ability to actually do her job minimal. And most importantly she was willing to do and submit substandard work. And the idiots her age were making about what we were making, which is offensive in and of itself.

In a word, NO! It's not ironic. Not at all. It's logically consistent because in all these cases there's profit to be made from a lack of acceptance of one's skin the way it is. So, dark folks lighten, pale folks darken. All to look as nature did not intend, and fueling an industry that profits from their cosmetic alterations.

I daresay the average american doesn't really know how heart transplants work, or who gets them. My father, who quit smoking at in 1976, received a fresh heart in 1997 following his third heart attack -- he has now lived longer than all of his male relatives, most of whom died of cardiovascular disease.

The stats indicate pretty clearly that a good number of people die immediately following the procedure, but few die in subsequent years and most heart transplant patients who survive the first few years can look forward to at 10+ years of good cardiovascular health.

The letter writer above is correct in that they're pricey -- my dad's was $half a million, and that was a decade ago. There also are fewer of them than are needed. However, the comments regarding age and lifestyle aren't entirely accurate. The standard of health and of behavior goes up with age, so those over a set age threshold receive much more scrutiny than do younger patients. Furthermore, 30% of patients are in their 50s, with 40% being younger.

Dear Salon,

How I tire of the surfeit of mother-centric programming within these electrical pages. How I anger when I see yet another article which narcissistically claims that child rearing is the most important job in the world and demands rights for mothers that apparently don't apply to the rest of us. How it annoys me that middle-class motherhood train wrecks get good money to pen their latest ruminations on how they're screwing up the children they chose to have. How I consider cancelling my subscription. Nearly every day these days.

As to this specific article, I am a childfree woman in a professional workplace which already has relatively liberal policies. I have 12 holidays, 12 sick days, and 15 general leave days every year -- and they roll over if I don't use them. I come in when I want to and leave when I want to as long as everything is done.

Yet the idea that mothers need more rights because they're mothers really angers me. Who do you think picks up the work when a mother is gone from the workplace for 12 weeks or more? Who do you think works when mothers are off because of family holidays? It's well and good to say that mothers "should" have these things -- but that enforces an additional cost on the employer if the workload is to stay equally distributed, and an additional cost on the other employees, who generally aren't compensated. In my case, for example, travel is a big component of my employment, and so is weekend work -- but the mothers in the office do neither, which means that I do all of it. Finally, mothers choose to be mothers. I choose not to be -- but my choice shouldn't come with the additional burden of being legally required to compensate for those who've made alternate choices.