Oh, prudie. She almost seems to be entirely indifferent to the nature of an offense, and entirely reactive to the amount of contrition showed. In her mind, it doesn't matter what you did, but how sad you are about it.

Hmm, I actually sort of agree with this. I would absolutely rather marry a guy who cheated once, even with a prostitute, than one who continually subjects me to recurrent bronchitis and possibly worse as I plead for him to stop, just because he finds it inconvenient to smoke outside. That's just abusive. Of course, the question is if the guy who cheated really will never cheat again.

Why does anyone read Slate anyway? Prudie is just one of the worst of their whole stable of awful writers who manage to trivialize everything. Useless waste of space.

There now, I feel better.

I agree she messed up her answer to the prositute one, but taking this in isolation, I absolutely agree with her. This guy is an ass. He won't quite smoking even though his wife's doctor has said it's damaging her health? What kind of asshole jerk insists that *his* needs (smoking) be met with nary a thought for hers??

I'm with Prudie on this one, except for the "otherwise good marriage" bit. There's nothing good about a marriage where the man's smoking habit takes priority over his wife's health.

Sigh. Dear Prudence has really gone downhill since Margo Howard left. This new woman is an idiot.

My personal favorite:
(Aug 31, 2006)
A parent writes in upset that her 11-year-old daughter's soccer team has named itself the "Evil Angels" (which mom objects to on the grounds that the word "evil" is offensive. Huh?) Runner-up name choices were the "Hot Tamales" & the "Red Hot Chili Peppers." I would have objected to the latter two, if any, because they strike me as rather sexually suggestive for 11-yr-old girls.
"Prudie's" response? "Since the girls already came up with some good alternatives, suggest that they choose one of the runner-up names."

God, I wanted to slap her.

That woman is a tool, although I kind of agree that cheating once is not an offence on par with continuously endangering someone's health.

But in general, she writes some really dumb stuff, as per the example given above.

If you want advice, read Dan Savage!

"What kind of asshole jerk insists that *his* needs (smoking) be met with nary a thought for hers??" A smoker. Every damn one I've known or been forced to live with has displayed this attitude, & no amount of taking your inhaler in front of them seems to matter.

I think Slate is kind of the op-ed equivalent to circus sideshows. Seriously. "Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you... The neocon liberal! *clapclapclap* The pro-porn feminist! *clapclapclap* ...and somebody who hates Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa! *clapclapclap*"

The objective of Slate seems to be not to say anything intelligent, but rather to say something nobody else is saying, no matter how stupid it is, and to make it sound like it could be intelligent. So the question Prudie no doubt asks herself as she sits down to write one of her Q&As is not "What would help this person most?" but rather "What advice, more-or-less consistent with my overall worldview, would this person be LEAST LIKELY to get from somebody else?"

Now, I'm all for creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, but a magazine that does nothing but say things that Nobody Ever Says is going to sound incredibly adolescent and churlish. Which is exactly what Slate is, most of the time.

Take the current top headline, for example, where they're attacking Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Why have they targeted this almost insipidly inoffensive writer? Because nobody else has done it yet, and that's all the reason they need.

Cheers,

TH

yeah i cant read slate. it's libertarian so it tries to be "maverick".

What did Hitchens say about MLK? I know about Mother Teresa (and I agree with him - she was emblematic of the Christian ideal of pseudo-charity), and I can buy Gandhi, largely because Orwell hated him, too.

Yeah, agreed that she had a good point on the smoking thing--that guy sounds like a world class douche.

Isn't the new Prudie in favor of pressuring married couples to have kids, in favor of shotgun marriages, and somewhat critical of casual sex? So how come Mr. Visited a Prostitute got a pass? It seems a bit inconsistent with her other views.

On the other hand, the smoker who won't even move his smoking outside on the advice of his wife's doctor sounds like a real jerk.

Because Prudie and Slate are pretty anti-feminist/sexist.