The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Madeleine Robins:

I'm afraid that between her "so sarcastic I can't parse what she's actually saying" tone and her history (and perhaps my persistent tendency to think of her in the same breath with Al Franken), the hype about Huffington and her Post is lost on me. She seems like empty calories: amusing enough to read all the way through, but with nothing that sticks to the inside of my brain.

Dobson's Focus on Family shows up briefly in the NY Times Magazine today, in Randy Cohen's The Ethicist column. I sympathize with the questioner's motives, but agree that pitching the magazines out is not the best tactic.

There are a lot of parents out there who are terrified that they're doing it wrong, unsure of their own authority, and, when confronted by a two year old who is absolutely certain that she is right in wanting whatever it is she wants, feel that the only way to stand up to that certainty is to go ballistic. It takes a lot more confidence--of several sorts--to deal with a kid who is out of control, than to hit the kid and establish your right to rule by force majeur. If your child has a meltdown in the checkout line at Safeway, you have to deal with the idea that the adults around you may think you're a wimp. You have may have to leave the groceries behind and take the kid outside until she calms down. You have to deal with holding a line which may seem increasingly arbitrary the longer the scene goes on ("Why the hell don't I just buy the damned gum and have done with it?") in support of your authority. You have to believe in your authority as a parent, and that, for a lot of people, is really tough. Of course, nothing says "authority" like martial law.

Dobson seems particularly outraged by the idea of children who are out of control, but one of the things childhood is about is learning control. It's not unreasonable or unusual for a kid to be out of control for exactly that reason. One of the smartest things I read, when I was a Brand New Parent, was a description of a tantrum from the two-year-old's point of view--how frightening it is to be swept away by anger and fear and outrage, without any idea of how to get control of that outrage. A beating sure as hell isn't going to solve that.

And about that poor 12-pound dog...Dobson couldn't just pick the poor animal up and put him in his cage? His description sure makes it sound like it was Dobson looking for a fight.

Who says there are no happy endings in publishing any more? Glad the Flatiron can once again breathe free.

Madeleine Robins is enough of a left-winger (fire breathing or otherwise) to feel apologetic about being a settled bourgeois type. But even before I became a property owner and an enemy of the people, I would have been pissed off by Amy Sullivan's smug assumption that my interests are the only ones I can tolerate discussing or espousing.

I was raised in Greenwich Village. I went to Little Red School House. I am not, by nature, combative, but I am a liberal by upbringing and inclination. I'm signed on with the Democrats for lack of any better option, but if they keep up this Republican Lite crap that's going to change. Let Bartlet be Bartlet.

Hal beat me to the question.

"Most parents don't care that statistics of child wellbeing are improving overall; they worry about whether their kid is going to use drugs or start having sex early or become a victim of violence. Some twenty-something blogger telling them not to worry about it isn't going to make them feel better."

Good gravy. As an actual parent--yes, I worry about whether my child is going to be a victim of violence, or start sniffing glue or having sex at a wildly early age. I also worry about other people's kids doing these things, since it lowers the over all tone of your 3rd grade class to have kids indulging in threesomes and crack orgies in the middle of recess. (Kidding. Honestly, I'm kidding.) Hell, when one of Becca's friends called her up at 10:30 last night (when Bec had been in bed since 8:30) I went so far as to wonder aloud what on earth her parents are doing letting a nine-year-old stay up that late. But the kid is not my kid, and that's not my choice. Nor do I, in the last analysis, want to take over making choices for other people. They may not like their choices. I'm pretty damned sure I won't like theirs. So I do my best to raise the level of discourse, as it were, by raising my kids according to my values. And I trust them to stay raised that way, unless they find a really compelling argument against those values, in which case I'd be interested to hear it too.

Amy Sullivan telling me what I'm concerned about doesn't make me feel supported or understood. It makes me want to hit her.

I have always thought that "It takes a Village" meant you stop a stranger's bolting toddler from falling onto the subway tracks--not that it was a license to scold the stranger for bad parenting or step in to parent the child yourself. I am really sick of hearing the phrase used to justify any and all sorts of smug intrusiveness into the lives of other people (including me). This is not a left-right thing. It's simple common sense. Or should be.

Sister Shotgun of Desirable Mindfulness, c'est moi.

I've been sending that column to everyone I know--particularly all the UUs (including the minister at my church in NYC). I feel so, like, revolutionary.

I didn't imagine Tom would be thrilled. Perhaps bemused, but not at the cost of that view up 5th Avenue.

Hope they rip the damned thing down ASAP. It's pretty much the definition of Eyesore.

(For the curious: My office is seven windows to the left of “$49.90.”)

This means that Tom's window looks out through the model's bellybutton, more or less. How does he like that?

Seeing one's name in the New York Times is a headrush better than drinking three double lattes in rapid succession. It's very cool indeed.

I have a bias too, and my kids already share it.

My kids don't watch the six o'clock news. I'd let them, if they were interested, but I'd be sitting with them, and we'd talk about what they'd seen--something my mother did, which I never got a chance to thank her for. For what it's worth, my older kid reads the paper, younger kid reads headlines and asks questions. I grew up watching footage from Vietnam; I won't say it made me the woman I am today, but it sure as hell had an impact.

Every parent makes different choices for their kids. Some of those choices make no sense to me, and some ideas that adults have about what kids can handle is, in my opinion, wildly wrongheaded. (I have a rant on this, but that's not for now.) I'll leave my fourteen year old out for now--she's old enough to find this ad on the net and bring it to me. I don't object to my nine-year-old seeing depictions of violence--even violence against children--so long as I'm with her, she has some idea of what's coming (ie., this is a newsclip, not an ad for Skittles), and we can discuss it. It would upset her, regardless of whether the kids were Palestinian, Afghani, American, or Inuit; she's an empathic, imaginative child, and can generalize from "a kid halfway across the world" to herself--and back again. But I don't want her coming across such things unknowing, just yet, or without me there to talk with her about it.

I'm not enraged by the idea of suspected terrorists having rights. It's the predictability of Ashcroft supporting anyone's right to bear arms, terrorist or Sunday school teacher, when he'd very likely be perfectly happy to toss the rest of the Bill of Rights out the window. Imagine Ashcroft concerning himself with the suspected terrorist's other rights--like say, to a speedy trial. You want one right, you gotta take 'em all.

Jonquil said: This ad is deliberately set up to be shocking, to attack without warning. This ad says, targeted directly at children, "You aren't safe. You aren't safe in your routine activities. Somebody's going to kill you."

I don't think the ad is targetted at kids--kids, as someone mentioned above, don't generally watch CNN. But my kids, at least, hop around on different channels, and, having played soccer, are quite likely to be drawn in to the earlier part of the ad. My 14 year old could handle the ad, though it would quite properly disturb her. My 9 year old would think she could handle it, but...no. She's pushing very hard to grow up, and sometimes I have to be the one who draws a line as to what is appropriate and what she can handle.

I think the ad should be seen--God knows the apathy in this country on this issue is appalling. But. I keep making a vague, imperfectly articulated connection between kids coming unawares upon land mines and kids coming unawares upon this ad. Yes, I know, it doesn't compare. Except that somehow it does.

On the basis of my household teenager's preferred activities, I'm waiting for the arrival of an ad that says: "Texting, the anti-drug." Or maybe "Sims, the anti-drug."

I've been at that soccer game, or its moral equivalent.

I think the ad should run, but as suggested above, later in the evening. Yes, the blood and gore is relatively slight compared to any random episode of CSI. But it's not something I'd want my nine-year-old to see; kids can handle a good deal of physical violence, but (speaking for my kids, anyway) they are far more vulnerable to emotional violence. If this ad is aimed at people who presumably have some chance of changing this administration's appalling record on landminds, they want to reach me, and other adults. Rebecca isn't their audience.

(I'd add that advertisements generally pop up unannounced; if you're letting your small children watch "X-Treme Soccer Explosions," in which Brandy Chastain, in a sports bra, gets blown up and then taken to the trauma center, at least you have some idea of what you're exposing them to.)

"Daddy, I want to be a drummer when I grow up."

"You can do one or the other, son. Not both."

Oh, man. But I did say to break someone else's leg, din't I?

I'm sure it was swell, even without the percussion section.

Wish I could hear you guys. It's been a while. Well, break a leg--preferably someone else's.

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