mbsullivan,

You're confusing me. I told on myself? It was my point to do so. I don't really get your point.

Just so we're clear what does Elizabeth Edwards mean by "the worst"?

We were taught that "Mrs." is a diminutive and should never be used. Men aren't referred to in reference to their spouses, and so women needn't be either.

When I was first taught these things (3rd grade or so) we were encouraged to use "Mz." in cases where martital state was unclear, unstated or irrelevant. Over the years, the default has just switched down to the universal "Ms."

I see no reason not use "Mr's." But I don't use it unless forced to.

I applaud Elizabeth Edwards. Getting a large judgment against a physician means a Judge or Jury determined Edwards had established a physician made a mistake causing permanent disability to an individual. That's not a bad thing. We are all held to a standard of professionalism for our work. Why shd doctors escape responsibility for their errors? WINNING malpractice cases is incredibily difficult. Long hours of work and courage.

John and Elizabeth Edwards have devoted time and money to the causes the candidate Edwards talks about - poverty in America and the 2 Americas. They established the center to study povery at the U of NC. You read an article in The Economist. It takes the position Edwards is directing the debate in this election by the issues he has raised. <link> Thanks for your time.

Geoff, you make perfect sense, but it still remains that her generation would react differently to that title; Ms is short for Miss; which is the proper title for an unmarried woman. To a married woman, it feels awkward being addressed as a miss... at least in her generation. Mz is the title for a divorcee, and became a cultural symbol of feminism; if you had used Mz it would have been offensive. As it was, she probably didn't see your post without the flag.

so, suing a doctor is, ipso facto, bad. and john edwards is therefore, bad. hmmmmm......

WHAT are you talking about??? as a female member of "her" generation, may i say you are full of it?? it's an "honorific" a "title". geeze.

yes indeed, it is a TRAVESTY that a man who came from a blue clooar family dared to be anything but blue collar. i'm sure his parents are (were) chagrined.

BRAVO!!! BRAVO!!!

spoken like a true "thinking person". thank you!

still clinging to the quaint idea that anybody can become president? sorry, but it takes a WHOLE BUNCH of money, and this is money edwards earned himself, as opposed to money his father, grandfather and great grandfather passed along to him. i may not vote for john edwards but he is a fine representative of the american dream.

everything I wrote was true: your opinion not withstanding.

Well, this depends on whether he made his money honestly or not. That's pretty muc hte crust of the matter. Al Capone also started poor and made a lot of money. He can be hardly characterized as following the footsteps of the American Dream.

If you have to pick your poison, I'll go with "Ms." and you take "Mrs." Either choice has the potential to offend. I was raised to think of "Ms." as good manners. Even if I disagreed with the logic, which I don't, I'd probably still use it to minimize the giving of offense. I'm just barely old enough to remember that "political correctness" used to be called "manners."

Anyhow, this conversation is irrelevant to this thread, and I'll bow out from it at this point.

My Slate logo is a disclaimer, not a cry for attention. I work for the magazine. If the disclaimer didn't make it evident, my comments still wouldn't have left room for confusion. Another non-issue, however.

It shows next to your name in flat view, but your Slate flag doesn't show in the thread view. I've checked in firefox and explorer, everyone else has the slate icon but you (in threads view) so as I'm viewing the thread, there's the Slate icon next to John Dickerson's post, but not next to yours.

I'm trying to put myself in her shoes...

She reads this article and wants to respond...

she joins and does a decent job of posting (her first ever, not bad)...

then there's a hundred replies...

she reads at first and responds once and then is overwhelmed...

without the slate flag in the thread, I doubt she notices a post addressing her as Ms Edwards...

that's all, nothing wrong with your manners.

It hard to know how well known the details of Edwards lawsuits are. The terrible accident involving Valerie was clearly the fault of a munipality and pool managment that failed to keep a pool drain cover attached. As terrible as they are, these accidents do happen. After winning $6 mil against the obvious blame worthy entities, John Edwards went after the pool drain cover manufacturer on the rather preposterous grounds (at least out side our law courts) that the manufacturer was somehow negligent. We all know about these crazy decisions that result in stepladders covered with warnings along the lines of don't do any of this long list of incredibly stupid things and that no one pays any attention to and which increase the cost of many things to everyone and do no good. (The missing warning in this case was presumably "Keep the drain cover you bought for saftey's sake securely on in the interest of saftey."

John Edward is nothing more than a typical, but obviously good, trial lawyer, who sought out extremely compelling accident victims and enriched himself. We need someone in touch with more common problems than these. John Edwards will not be able to find an innocent fall guy to sue to fix the poverty problem he's basing his campaign on.

Since Bobby's day, we've found that most remianing poverty is very culturally driven and consequently the means to alleviate it appear extremely difficult and unclear. I see no recognition of this hard reality in anything John Edwards says. Were he to be President we'd have nothing but another ineffectual "War on Poverty" with ill conceived, headline grabbling programs that would amount to nothing more than throwing money at the problem so John could "keep" his campaign promises.

The War On Poverty was actually very successful unlike what killed it off,the war in Vietnam.Conservatives would have people believe that the War on Poverty was a failure and was nothing more than a wealth transfer scheme.Actually it was neither and it was Republicans with the "greed is good" and every man for himself and government is the root of all evil philosophies that have been blatant failures.It is because of the demonization of the poor and programs to help lift them out of poverty that the US has a higher poverty rate than any other industrialized nation.It is because of the demonization of government and taxes needed to perform basic governmental functions that we bridges collapsing in Minnesota.Meanwhile the George W.Bush's of this world make money through sweetheart deals instead of hard work and merit and then have the temerity to say that the suggestion that they should contribute more to the public welfare because they are wealthy(to whom much has been given,much is expected) is scoffed at and called socialism.