It is utterly patronizing and jerky to imply that the woman's atheism is, in whole or in part, due to postpartum depression.

There's really no way around that.

The whole debate about whether to sleep with people or not is totally retrograde and silly. Sleeping with a guy doesn't magically change him from the kind who might want to get married to you to the kind who just cares about sex.

It just doesn't.

Your decision to sleep with people (or not) isn't altering the calculation one bit. It may be making your emotional state more difficult to handle while you're figuring out what kind of dude you've got -- but it isn't changing anything. It's a total mistake to think that you can get what you want by doing all the right things.

You get what you want by identifying people for what they are.

Jackie Brown is the best movie ever.

Are conservatives writing essays saying 'we're crazy to insult people from San Francisco, Chicago, and New York'?

I think everyone can agree that regionalism isn't a great way to build up a plurality -- and that our differences should be celebrated when that's possible.

But the urban folks in America have put up with decades and decades of having to put up liberals with a Southern tint just to stand any chance of getting into office. We've dealt with put-downs and hatred. New Yorkers were treated like scum by the Southern Right until their city was attacked by terrorists. Obama's city of origin is somehow treated like a mark against him.

When are these folks from the rural South going to start cutting the rest of us a break? I know they don't have a monopoly on Southern culture, but it feels like they're trotted out every 4 years as the 'real' America, and I'm good and sick of it.

I got no problem with Cary's advice, and e-mail snooping is to be avoided as a general rule.

That said: I would never even *consider* writing or IMing anything like that ("I don't miss my spouse much"), because broadcasting a lack of enthusiasm about your spouse makes you a jackass. Either you don't mean it and you're posturing for your friends, or you do mean it and you should be a little embarrassed that you paraded this fact around.

The onus is on you not to populate the world with data that will hurt the one person whose side you're supposed to be on.

My e-mail is open. I don't get 'private' texts. I don't have secret communiques. Don't write things that you wouldn't be OK with your spouse hearing -- say it to their face or keep your mouth shut. Your world will be much less complicated that way.

Paglia's answer on Palin was terrrrrrrible.

5 paragraphs about how the media is mean, 2 little sentences tucked in the center about how Palin might need to hit the books.

Is that really the proper emphasis, Camille? 90% 'bad media', 10% 'dumb Palin'?

No offense, but that makes you just as media-centric and intellectually bankrupt as the culture you're decrying. And I know you're smart enough to see the irony.

This subject is so tiresome and stupid. Different elements of different cultures match up in certain ways and it doesn't have to always be about exploitation.

Is my infatuation with French women some form of cultural imperialism? Or do they just have some historically wonderful branding that has rubbed off on me in my time on the earth? And is it really all that big a deal one way or another?

I don't want people's sexual desires ground down into respectful and homogeneous paste. Let us be quirky. Let us like things because the idea of it makes us happy. What is the big deal? I feel like this whole debate should have ended 15 years ago.

I hate to be the kind of person who writes off a review without having seen the movie, but Zacharek seems to have not liked the Foot Fist Way, which I found to be one of the best movies I've seen in years. If Observe and Report is more of the same, I'm sure I'll love it.

I just can't say enough nice things about Foot Fist Way, and it was shocking to me that it received so little attention. I assumed it was a straight to DVD piece of shit until someone sat me down and made me watch it.

"This isn't a war, this isn't fought between EQUAL armies"

I don't know what they taught you in school, but wars don't happen between equal armies. There's a winning side and a losing side, and losing usually means people tire of provoking the winners. There were a number of avenues for peaceful resolution that have been ignored by both sides. But ignoring them is always more painful for the losers. That's why it's a negotiation.

If this is a 'slaughter', it's awfully slow moving and awfully polite. You do a disservice to the real genocides that are happening TODAY when you conflate them with the political grandstanding that's happening in Gaza.

It's all very sad. But you are definitely not helping.

Qwerty, that's ridiculous.

Sorry you can't convince every left liberal (like me) to agree with your positions. You might start with being more sensible and less hyperbolic. If you think what you write even matters, you should know that being over the top really puts your cause at a huge disadvantage.

These countries are at war. The war isn't over. Until the losing side accepts defeat, the winning side will continue to democratically vote for more invasions, more bombing runs, and more war. How else could it be?

Both sides voted for their leadership. But only one is going to pay dearly for not understanding international diplomacy. No one is going to do much more than complain at Israel -- les jeux sont fait, more or less.