Which daily?

This Indiana flyer thing is a case of your (Amy) honesty hurting your circulation success (I wrote you an email several months back thanking you for your straight forward approach and recognizing it hurts your professional success). Not sure what you can do about it (the PC crowd dominates media) other than temper your columns with a 'walk the MSM/PC line'. For what it's worth.....you recognize your own success is hurt by being honest/not PC (and you are actually helpful to LW's) yet you still do it, that says something very very good about you (the bottom line is you're worth a lot more than many of the more professionally successful MSM phonies).

I agree that narcissism is a major and growing problem in society. There are many people who have ridiculously inflated views of their own abilities and qualities, feel an enormous sense of entitlement, and react with outrage and indignation whenever their ego is threatened.

My mother and older brother both have narcissistic personalities. Sometimes I wonder how I ever had the patience to put up with them.

A daily in Indiana that had wanted to pick up my column just decided I "might not be right for their community page."

And it's THEIR LOSS! Knuckleheads!

World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin managed to annoy the brass, including General George Patton, pretty often. However, another general told Mauldin that if he wasn't puncturing a few egos, he wasn't doing his job. So preach on, Ms. Alkon!

So let me see if I understand this...they are incompetent prudes because they won't pick up your column? Because you are not a "lazy thinker" or "boring" like those other columnists?

I can certainly agree that narcissism is an epidemic. I just don't see this column as being immune from it.

That's the artist life! Tons and tons of rejection! But you know it's worth it.

Don't dwell on the ones who don't like your work, because there are tons who do. Dwell on them.

Not very smart on their part. You might be edgier (sp) than there normal columnist but you would also profide a new and refreshing perspective. With newspapers going down the proverbial shithole and being used for nothing more than lining people's birdcages- you would think they would want to do something to spice up their paper.

What's your daily readership for the blog?

Pray tell, why are you looking at neuroplasticity?

The "greater good."???
How does this fit with libertarianism?
It seems (under libertarianism) we should maximize our pleasures, and the hell with society. The hidden hand (and law enforcement, for bona fide crimes) should fix everything.
The "greater good." Are Amy's socialist Jewish roots showing (if not grey hairs?)
BTW, why is Amy always on her high horse, gallivanting about town, lording over miscreant cell phone users, late night carousers, duncecap newspaper editors (a pandemic), let alone those who dare to ask her for advice?
Could it be all that all the schoolmarming is actually for Amy's benefit, and not for society's?
Just saying.

It seems (under libertarianism) we should maximize our pleasures, and the hell with society.

?????

RE: neuroplasticity. I really can't wait to read this one Amy!!!

I always get my "Amy fix" early, on the creators.com website...which also features 2 letters and responses each Wednesday, usually a week earlier than these are posted.

Is it because your readers say "fuck" too much?...

"Now I'll make an assumption about you -- you feel a little bad today (or in general) and you thought you'd feel better cutting me down to size."

Nope. I was simply stating my perspective on this article. What I find interesting is that because I didn't sing praises about you and everything you write, it leaves you with the assumption that perhaps there is something wrong with me (I either feel badly today or in general). It just brings me back to my original point...just because some people aren't interested in your column doesn't mean they are somehow incompetant, dull or unevolved. On the flip side, just beacuse some people don't like your column doesn't mean that you are uninteresting, boring or uncreative either.

"I see it as my job to make people feel like crap about themselves for the greater good and their own, too!"

Are we smug or what? Let's pat ourselves on the back some more. Thank Not-God that we're not as stupid and deluded as everyone who doesn't think like we do, shall we? And at least WE'RE not so rude as to talk on our cell phones on the bus, as if that's the worst possible transgression imaginable. Yeah... we're not rude... we only call people names on our own column, but never on the bus.

And, for everyone who gets skewered in Amy's advice column or her blog, she can say "hey you wrote to me, so you asked for it!" Amy, it's easy to play by your own rules on your own turf, and to forget that trashing people on your column and then declaring yourself the winner doesn't make you omniscient, or wise, or all-powerful OUTSIDE of a limited and self-selected world.

One of the main appeals of your advice column is actually the "hey it's not me" factor, as in Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery". We all love to watch a train wreck as long as we get off one station before.

Back to the question at hand. Amy, I don't think that your advice column by itself is as potentially offensive to newspaper readers as your blog, with its frequent foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of all things Islamic and all things non-atheistic. Even if the blog isn't printed, it's still readily available on your site for all to see.

As far as the "science" goes, yes, you do pull up interesting stuff, and I think that you do your homework, but you're a little to keen on using biology to justify social conventions that may more true in image-conscious LA than elsewhere.

I personally would like to see more respectful dialogue both from you and from some of your commenters. There's a lot of name-calling even among the commenters, that is frankly a turn-off and doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Karen - stop trolling. You gain nothing by insulting our hostess. Bad manners.

vi - you seem to think it's ok to not point out Islamic honor killings and Creationist nonsense? That's all Amy is doing.

I sure as hell don't agree with you about everything Amy but you are an entertaining read who delivers a swift kick in the ass to people who need it. I'm sorry the paper was too chickenshit to pick your column up.

By all means, protest honor killings, which are illegal as are other forms of murder. But don't conflate that with every single person on the planet who practices Islam. That's lazy, sloppy thinking with overblown rhetoric, not that different from Sarah Palin and her "death panels".

So... OK to criticize honor killings, but not OK to use such a broad brush, especially from someone who claims to be a thinking person.

It's also not OK to shrilly name-call anyone who criticizes Amy's extreme anti-religious stance, which is basically diehard atheism. It's fine to be an atheist. But on Amy's blog, anyone who's not an atheist is instantly branded as dumb and deluded.

Of the so-called "Arabs" that I know (actually includes Lebanese, Egyptian, Turkish, Malay, Iranian, Pakistani - not all Arabs) who are nominally Muslim, they're about the same as a so-called "Easter Christian" who goes to church once a year but who still accepts the basic underpinnings of the faith. I've never seen them pray during the day. They see the inside of a bar a lot more than the inside of a mosque, and their chauvinism, such as it is, is no worse than what you'd find at a typical sports bar filled with "pure Americans".

They are no more responsible for honor killings than I, as nominal Jew, am responsible for those kidney-selling Orthodox rabbis in New Jersey.

But I'm not going to renounce or hide my Jewishness because of those rabbis, either. Why should I? Even if I never go to synagogue ever again in my life and I deny God from every rooftop, I'm still Jew with my Jewish ancestry and my Jewish cultural upbringing.

Do you believe that every single person who professes any sort of Islamic sentiment today is directly responsible for 9-11? That's total nonsense.

What's wrong with YOU?

It's not that I don't like it here... sometimes you bring up good discussions, and some, but not all, of the regular commenters are sincerely thoughtful people. I have actually changed or researched views based on what was discussed here.

Of course dissing me for (you imagine) reading Marmaduke isn't really intelligent debate. That's just a cheap shot. You are making assumptions about my life outside of this blog based on made-up evidence, and that's no more rational than believing in "god".

I think the main problem with honor killings is the killing part - and murder is already illegal.

Although you're well-read in most things you write about, I can't help but wonder how much first-hand experience you actually have with Islam, with individual human beings who practice or were brought up to practice Islam, or with any country or culture where Islam is practiced as perhaps one of many options. (Malaysia, for example, has Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism.) You're not very informative in your diatribes on the subject, and you never include any analysis.

It's like the frenzy over the latest bugbear... CHILD PORN!! All you have to do now is show a baby on a bearskin and you'll go straight to jail, even if it's you in the photo. And all I have to do to drive you into a rage is to even suggest that maybe you're not 100% right about this one topic? Jeez.

Have you actually read the Koran? Or any of the Hadith? Do you even know what the Hadith is? Can you name even one Islamic theologian other than Al-Qaeda? Have you read any of Fatima Mernissi's stuff? She's a feminist critic of Islam who actually read it, and her remarks are a lot more enlightening than your blanket statements masquerading as the only relevant facts anyone needs to know.

Just for the record... I haven't read the Koran or the Hadith, and I'm not that interested in doing so. I don't like being told what to do, by anyone, so I wouldn't enjoy a structured religious community much. But if Islam is really the problem (and Xtianity) why don't you start a serious campaign to outlaw that?

A woman doesn't even have to be Islamic to die at the hands of an angry or jealous male. Or female. Jilted lovers kill their exes every day. Parents abuse their children, fathers rape their daughters, and pimps beat their whores, sometimes even kill them, without any religious excuse whatsoever.

Vi- there is a big difference between Islam which rejects Jihad or the Islam as a Religion of the Way of the Sword and something like let's say Sufism. Islam in it's broader spectrum operates more like Marxism than a spiritual base from where individuals can obtain strength, freedom and find their paths to reach their full potential as human's on this planet.

Christianity and Judaism, are religions in which I do not participate nor do I believe in, however - for the most part are not the ideological Marxist type base that we see in the majority of countries that practice perverted Islam.

Are their Christians that are truly heinous beyond words, yes, there are...but by and large their religion does not foster these qualities in their followers.

Indonesian Islam has become the antithesis of Jihad type Islam - they did this by kicking all the "bad guys" out - and that says something to me. They rejected the notion that they should KILL people in order to be saved.

They did so by showing us they could be trusted by electing a leader by the name of Susilo Bambang Yudhayono. Bambang is pro-US and pro-US military, and pro-capitalist. He completed US Army Airborne and Ranger courses Jungle Warfare School in Panama, and is a graduate of the US Army General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. He graduated with a Master's degree in business management from Webster University in St. Louis, and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Bogor University in Indonesia.

He believes in above all rejection of the Jihadi Islam and embracing Enlightenment among his citizens. He is working with other Islamic sects who believe in non-violence and ridding the region once and for all of the fanatics.

If and when Islamic countries start doing things like these, I do take notice, and I do separate them...but this is, unfortunately, not commonplace in Islamic countries.

Until it is, I think they all should be feeling the pressure cooker from us.

I've been reading Amy's column for many years. I don't agree on everything with her and I don't think that she is for everyone but I have a great respect for her opinions and the fact that she always backs up what she says with research. Her smarmy comments are meant to be humorous but also the kick in the ass that some people need.

What I don't understand is why an editor loving the column would rule it out. Why not let the readers decide? What a vanilla world we'll live in if everyone chooses the safe politically correct route. It reminds me of the Howard Stern haters. Nobody is twisting their arms to turn the dial to him, just as nobody would be twisting anyone's arms to turn to the page with Amy's column. Soon there will be no choice left in this country.

What I don't understand is why an editor loving the column would rule it out. Why not let the readers decide?

Editors are looking at the bottom line, which usually includes shrinking news holes and an evaporating, aging readership. A few hundred readers deciding they're not going to read your newspaper anymore because they don't like one columnist is a big deal. It sucks, and it means everything is bland like tapioca, but it's the current reality.

Oops, I mean, Kristen. Sorry, read that in my software and I couldn't see the italics.