Agree that their butterscotch pudding is absolutely ambrosial. But back to your comment " it couldnt have been that hard," sure, if menu changes were only requested a few times a night. But this is Venice: God knows every customer in that place would make a minimum of 50 changes if they were allowed. A little tough love clearly isn't hurting business; the place is always packed. Hopefully other chefs will follow suit.

Let me try to counteract Mark Steyn's Wail of Conservative Geezer Pain...

You shouldnt despair because people choose to flirt via email ( flirting in the normal sense, not the Weinerian variety) because in practice, it allows you to keep alive a fine Victorian tradition.  Using the ever-helpful PRINT button, these flattering emails can be printed out and bundled together with ribbon (a la Jane Austen) to be read and sighed over, long after the flirtor's face had faded from memory.

They're also useful for blackmail--another fun Victorian custom !---and you can dramatically toss them in the fireplace as many times as you wish, knowing full well they can always be retrieved from your email archives.

One more bit of praise for Megan's column: she asks the logical question, if Wiener and his wife have a private "arrangement" as so many liberal commentators are assuming, why hasn't Weiner's wife said so, in his defense? That would shut up all the people shrieking about his cyber-cheating. And he wouldnt have had to tell some many absurd lies.

Hmmm. Curious...

What drives me nuts is that we in the private sector must hold ourselves to a much higher standard than Congress. I'm continually amazed at how careful and cautious senior corporate people are about doing ANYTHING that might sully the "brand" of their company. To the point of removing innocuous vacation photos from private Facebook pages. Why shouldnt this group of elected buffoons, whose salaries are paid by us, not be penalized in the same way?

I wonder how much of this is an urban thing; friends in the midwest tell me that middle-class kids there are still being raised "free range". 

I too ran free when I was little, but I also grew up in the suburbs, where there was minimal traffic and if your kickball rolled into the street, which it did about 70 times an hour,  the odds of being mowed down by a car was almost zero.

My sister lives in a very traffic-y part of Los Angeles, where its not possible for little kids to get much exercise without involving the area beyond their small front yard. So she's resigned to becoming a scheduler of gymnastics and soccer, since she feels its the only way they'll get some exercise. Otherwise, they'd be glued to their video games.

None of this seems relevant to Los Angeles, esp in the entertainment industry. Here you have a ton of men who barely got a GED, if even that,  who head studios or produce movies or who run TV networks. Shockingly, these men are considered "desireable"

I suspect that that if the "tradesman" works in an occupation with an element of glamor to it, he suddenly gets an "honorary degree".

The beauty of GWTW is that it teaches history in the most painless way. The dialog-- especially between Scarlett and Rhett-- is so entertaining that the reader doesn't notice she is getting a great Civil War tutorial at the same time.

I think it's merely the timing of the polls; people will knowingly give loony responses in early polls, just to keep things interesting. I myself am guilty of this, as my fantasy of a a Giuliani ~Sharpton presidential debate once caused me to give some appalling answers to a pollster.

But once it got closer to election time, I renounced my earlier "choices" and got serious.

the discussion about Mark's kid playing the Fallopian tube in the school play was worth the full $3.76 (or whatever they charge me each month). Can't wait to hear the next one.

"Don't be dissuaded by that moron.  Check out a local gun club or police department for good beginner instruction."

Fear not, I plan to try again soon. In retrospect, the problem was ultimately the gun. We desperately wanted to shoot a glock, since--at the time-- it was the rappers gun of choice, and inherently cool. But it was really difficult to load; we weren't strong enough to shove the bullets in the magazine ( ?) thing, and so we had to continually go back to bug the guy to help us. 

I grew up in Central CA, where everyone had guns, so it was normal to see them around. I was always vaguely pro-gun but not until the Heller decision did everything finally click. Once out of college, my girlfriends and I decided we needed some experience, and took a few "lessons" with a glock at a Los Angeles shooting range. Now that was a trip: we tell the dude at the counter--who is taking a phone call while checking our ID-- that we're beginners and "needed some instructions". While still talking on the phone, he hands us the ear covers, gun and ammo and casually points to door of the shooting range. We're like UH WAIT A MINUTE, SIR, CAN YOU COME WITH US? We're NEW."  He kinda shrugged his shoulders and did a quickie demonstration and then left us to our own devices. Mercifully, we didnt kill anyone and after a while, we managed to hit a target.. But the whole experience was only mildly exciting; not enough to make us want our own guns.

I got my numbers from a recent article in Advertising Age, where Rupert Murdoch is quoted denying to Newcorp Stockholders that Fox is subsidizing Beck. Im too lazy to find the link, but the gist of the article was that Beck was losing ratings/advertising revenue and the downward spiral it was expected to continue, not plateau. Which is a cause for concern, esp if Ailes has a juicy replacement in the wings (i.e. The Palin Family Variety Show)

Apparently most of Becks major advertisers have bailed, and the show was increasingly carried by Fox in-house ads. And his ratings have dipped by 30%.  It will be interesting to see what, if any, major advertisers he can interest in his new gig.

As a Thatcher devotee, I'd like to be on record for buying the HARDCOVER version of Claire's book at full price. Talk about money well spent; I totally rely on it for ammunition at enemy-infested LA cocktail parties.

  Ok, back to book selling strategy; I do corporate PR but get occasional entertainment projects to stay sane.  Isn't Merle Streep doing a movie about Margaret Thatcher? Claire should get her press releases and story pitches ready to coincide with the release date; it's not uncommon for books (or indie films) declared DOA to rise from the tomb when another, more heavily promoted movie/book on the same topic is released.

Hi Matthew,

I agree that you need to make some sweeping statements in order to get initial interest, but by using "we" you're implying the reader is also one of the many, many losers that's being described.  After soldiering through far too many of these articles (I'm in PR ,so it's my grim duty to read them) "we" usually means "the author's friends in Manhattan", who are only too happy to re-enforce his doom-laden views. To be fair, conservatives occasionally do the same, with their "the world is going to hell but for entirely different reasons" articles. But conservatives will usually throw in the disclaimer: "fortunately this doesn't apply to us."

Also, I don't buy his argument, not that there's much of one; he just strings together the usual cliches.

I also thought this article was lame. It sounds like one of those NYTimes Style section or Sunday Magazine articles where "we" never seems to include the author.  Speak for yourself, pal. 

As others have said, Conservatives/Libertarians find happiness in the pursuit, and by "pursuit" we mean useful work, not running after pointless trends (unless we can  make a buck off them). Perhaps it's this "work" thing  that's hard for a Frenchman to understand.

And I suppose being French, he doesn't get religion either. For many people, including myself, it is the foundation of our happiness.