When there are visitors, usually to The Common Ills main site, I will occassionally get an e-mail asking (or exclaiming) "How dare ____ write" whatever.  "How dare they!"

They can write whatever they want.  We need more voices not less. 

But the e-mails that always surprise me are the ones that ask how I could have written ____ when, in fact, I didn't write it.  Maybe Betty wrote it, or Rebecca or Folding Star or The Third Estate Sunday Review without any input or assist from me.

By all means, let me know if you disagree with something I've said.  But I'm responsible for me.  I'm not responsible for what others write.  There was a time, not that long ago, where someone who should have known better wanted to hold me accountable for what Rebecca wrote.  I like Rebecca, I support her right to write whatever she wants and I enjoy her voice.  But I'm not Rebecca.  And anyone who reads her blog Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Rebecca will frequently note a disagreement of opinion between us.  We can, and sometimes do, disagree.  We're different people, not clones.

I don't write the way she writes, she doesn't write the way I do.  For either of us to attempt to ape the other would result in our killing on our voice as we attempted to practice imitation.  So, and here's the point, the easiest way to ensure no reply (other than the automated one) is to attempt to draw a line between Rebecca and myself or any member and myself.

I think everyone is doing great work.

The second easiest way to guarantee no e-mail response is to tell me that I said something that I didn't.  I've spent too many hours looking for, for instance, my universal praise of every word that David Corn has ever written.  I never found it because it's never been posted.  I don't have time for that nonsense.  (And it truly angers me to be told I wrote something I never did.)

By all means, pick apart what I wrote, but after the David Corn (and other topics), I stopped replying to those sort of e-mails. 

There are certain things that I would never say and when I'm told that I said something I didn't, my first instinct is to think I must have badly written an entry that confused the person e-mailing.
A person, it should be noted, who will never include a link to the supposed post.  So I'd waste multiple hours attempting to find the non-existant post.

I don't have time for that these days.  So those e-mails get read but no response.

I'm thinking that those have been the big questions from e-mail coming from people who use this site.

If I forgot something, remind me please.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.