Granted, the writer doesn't give us enough information to evaluate his claim. However, I can personally testify to the venality of academic institutions.

It's all the more galling because these people are always spouting self-righteous, p.c. platitudes while their treatment of underlings is reprehensible.

My experience: a couple of years ago, I was "let go" from an adjunct teaching position so they could give the course to the daughter of a full-time faculty member. I'd been employed there for four years and had received very positive evaluations from students.

Of course, the institution tried to disguise its actions by giving me a "new" course - one that started at 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings. When - surprise, surprise - an insufficient number of students registered for that course, I was out of a gig. The institution claimed it wasn't nepotism because the dean, who ultimately made the hiring decisions, was not related to the person in question. Nor did I receive any support from the union that supposedly represented me.

What I learned from all this is that I would've had more rights working at McDonald's than as a part-time employee at this community college. I said this to a high-ranking official at my former institution and, while he wasn't pleased, he didn't exactly contradict me.

It's a good thing my full-time work is in the corporate world. Say what you want about corporate America, but the battles that take place there are ultimately much more honest than the sleazy hypocrisy of academe.

Any one of them would deserve 100 times the media coverage this event has consumed. And it hasn't been easy to find out what's going on in the world, given that CNN (a supposedly reputable source), has been all-Anna, all-the-time for the past 24 hours.

I think the reason reaction here on Salon has been so strong is that this dubious event embodies what many of us hate about the U.S. media and U.S. culture. Here we have the death of woman whose only apparent talent was for notoriety of the most salacious sort. Yet this so-called mourning is not limited to the celebrity tabloids or gossip pages. Rather, valuable time on public airwaves is put to use for the idiotic ramblings of "cultural critics," whose cliche-ridden eulogies for a person of no public consequence are not worth listening to for one second. With all due respect to Anna Nicole, why should anyone but her family care?

That so many people "feel connected" to this attention-obsessed, golddigging woman says a great deal about us as a people, and none of it is flattering.

For Ms. Miles, religion seems to be her way of finding her own identity - one that's separate from, but perhaps not completely incompatible with, the humane, though atheistic, values of her parents.

Her frame on the whole question of religion would likely be very different if she'd grown up in an environment similar to my own - in a small Southern town full of Baptists and other fundamentalists. Although the church I grew up in would be classified as mainstream Protestant (not fundamentalist), the general experience of being surrounded, from a religious perspective, by narrow-mindedness, intolerance, hypocrisy and self-serving interpretations of the Gospel has probably driven me away from church and any kind of organized religion forever. I simply saw too much of that in my youth to place any trust in any religious institution. It's the nature of institutions to serve themselves first, and that includes many of the liberal ones.

Although I greatly admire the moral teachings of Jesus, I find today's retail, consumerist version - the "personal Jesus" - to be profoundly offensive and narcissistic. I wouldn't necessarily accuse Ms. Miles of propagating that, but the greater problem of all religious fervor lies in the very notion that one should believe in something with no evidence. When extrapolated to other parts of peoples' lives (and, in my experience with religious people, it invariably happens), that mindset is fertile ground waiting to be exploited by all manner of charlatans, bigots, shrewd manipulators and plain old crooks. Ultimately, we surrender our critical thinking habits only at a great price.

Though I am in no way a global warming denier or otherwise ostrich-like, I never fail to get more than a bit peevish when celebrities, including the former vice-president, take it upon themselves to lecture us peons about its dangers. First of all, every one of these people consumes more energy, in the form of their large (and multiple) homes, their large (and multiple) automobiles, and their constant (lavish) travel, than even the tackiest suburban-living, SUV-driving "average American". Maybe they should look in the mirror before they start preaching to the rest of us.

And what they usually won't just come right out and say is that the habit of consumerism in all its forms is what's defiling the earth. No, that wouldn't fly with the corporations who sponsor them. The best conservation is... conservation.

Great, Al. You made a documentary about a serious issue. Now go tell the Chinese why they shouldn't have cars and big houses just like Americans. Good luck.