There are only 2 kinds of movies. Good movies and bad movies. Same thing with writing. Good writing or bad writing.

And this was really good writing.

Loved your essay. Totally understand. I am a writer as well and the impending gloom of realizing that your beloved might need to be supported, much less pull their own weight, is anxiety producing to say the least. Financial responsability is necessary from every practical standpoint in the world we live in. Most difficult at times is understanding the degree to which this affects our artistic and romantic lives. I thought you described it very well and humorously, and wish you and your husband good fortune.

This site is rapidly devolving into utter crap. First, A cover a few weeks ago about Michelle Obama's ass. Today, the so-called TV critic's current drivel about the "embarassment of riches" on FOX, and now this insipid swill about a poor schnook who couldn't keep his lady in diamonds and pearls? I'm close to pulling the plug for good on Salon, which is turning into a bad imitation of "Oprah".

This writer makes your average narcissist seem sacrificial in comparison. Is anyone at Salon awake? Do you people realize the zeitgeist out here? Who are your writing and editing for? The Junior League? Oprah's Book Club membership?

I know I'm peeing into the wind, but this writing is so glib, inauthentic and mawkish it can't really be taken seriously. It reads, and more importantly sounds, like a rejected script from a prequel to "Desperate Housewives", "How I Became a Desperate Housewife", with tangents on salad ingredients and interior decorating.

I'm glad I'm "over the hill" (and far away from the prevailing readership of this shrine to narcissism) and can sit in a strip club for a few bucks and have some wonderful young amazon put her behind in my face with a smile on hers. Little or no conversation coming from her. This is my idea of romance...don't cry for me, Salon World.

...and having to change their demographic focus because of it, it would be well deserved.......I personally went away for quite some time due (what I perceived at least---"and perception is reality"))to the obvious flagrant pro-Hillary bias......and only came back, because I couldn't take the whining and delusional nuttiness on some of the other major Leftist sites.....I suspect that I wasn't alone in my exodus. Moral of the story-there are consequences to be paid when you back the wrong horse

V V

It's even sadder that you'll be looking down on him for the rest of his life. He doesn't deserve that.

Financial responsability is necessary from every practical standpoint in the world we live in

What a pile of piffle. FYI, in this cowboy capitalist nation where the value of work is forever debased, there is NO such thing. It only arrives for some who play the commercial whore game. (E.g. most writers published in the corporate domain are "whores" who have sold out their values and principles for money. I have more respect for an unemployed writer or a guy -like the former LA Times columnist Robert Scheer- who can now only be published in Hustler)

What the current U.S. has now evolved into is a debased money culture and money society. The only "god" left to worship is the Almighty Buck. We can thank the power brokers and whore politicos for allowing citizens to mutate into "consumers" (thankfully less now in the recession) and democracy into a corporatocracy.

As the author of 'Nickel and Dimed' - Barbara Ehrenreich, noted, working at Walmart didn't even help her pay both food and rent at a dump motel. She had to go on food stamps to survive. (At least with that one 40 hr. job). There is a real moral problem here too, since without a living wage, economic warfare is all that remains- with each little person fighting and struggling against each other little person for survival.

The notion circulated that 'Socialism is against human nature' and one must 'suffer to survive' is the usual type of addle-pated bilge circulated by free market fundamentalists and their lackeys in the corporate media.

Nothing will improve, as G.P. Brockway notes ('The End of Economic Man'), until we regain the equilibrium that once existed between speculation and actual production, human labor. Until the REAL productive economy is restored - including re-ascendancy of labor in relation to capital, minimization of expedient- exploitative outsourcing. (See e.g. The Judas Economy- The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, by Anne Colamosca and William Wolman).

As it is now, millions of jobs are sacrificed to speculation and "financial responsibility" is wielded like a cudgel at all those wo refuse to comply to the demands of the corporate slave state.

Social Darwinism, the embodied religion of the corporo-capitalists and their jobs- was never part of Darwin's original theory of evolution by natural selection. The latter was - rather- invoked by one Brit named Herbert Spencer- who believed he was entitled to over-extend to the social milieu. Hence, the name. (Btw, it was also Spencer who coined the phrase, 'survival of the fittest', Darwin himself never used it).

The problem with all this is that human beings are fundamentally a cooperative not a competitive species. They succeed best when working as teams and helping each other, not leaving the weakest in the dust.

Humans emerged from the rainforests of Africa because they were able to employ their large brains in cooperative efforts, while the lesser animals -predators slaughtered each other. Going back to that law of the jungle now- especially when we have so much technology- merely assures our own extinction.

What this woman contemplated - preparing to abandon her husband because he'd temporarily been jettisoned out of the work and buy condition by the fascist corporate pigs is a reversion to the jungle meme and extreme.

Ultimately, the highest ethics supports the survival and existence of our whole species, not merely some (e.g. who can make money) - while the left are rest to die. But the false construct of Social Darwinism would happily allow that in order to be used to prop up justifications for dog-eat-dog cowboy capitalism.

As Charles Reich has noted, not all citizens have the wherewithal to support themselves - because the capitalist system is set up to keep a large % unemployed, to keep inflation down. This is what is called the "employment rent".

Next time a wife is considering tossing her hubby under the bus for loss of income, she might want to get that into her cranium.