Hey, Prudie,

Regarding your current crop of phony submissions and scripted responses:

Please refrain from using words and phrases like “partner”; “cuddling needs”; “intensely”; “entwined”; “beloved member”; “cringe”; “wrath”; and “rebuffed”...as everyone else in the Free World, (besides you) doesn’t ever, ever use those terms while allegedly pouring their hearts out.

No one ever says: "Partner".

They say: Husband, Wife, Boyfriend, or Girlfriend. Across the fucking board.

And no one EVER, EVER, EVER says: "Cuddling Needs". (I’m still puking on that one, by the way).

They say: I want Him or Her to hold me.

Just hold me.

Cuddling needs? You seriously hurt my head with that crap. And, after 8 years of GW, that’s really doing something.

Anyway, continued success in your fiction-writing career with Slate. But do try to appropriate other voices besides yours into the alleged exchanges, or you’ll always be what you are now.

Please don't cringe with intense wrath as a beloved member of the Fray entwines his rebuffs with his cuddling needs.

I'm still puking.

GOW

GOW--I know, this is really irritating me as well.

But, you know, stupid people have a method to their stupidity. Yoffe is right now trying to prove that, theoretically, she is not a right-wing, mom-needs-to-cater-to-her-chil­d's-every-need, conservative yahoo.

So, you see, last week--she made a pro-gay statement.

This week--she makes an anti-anti-Semite statement.

She also brings up something to show that she's not an over-nurturing nutcase--theoretically.

All of these things are made up so that Yoffe can express an opinion which, so she thinks, helps her to manipulate the image of herself via her column.

Look, I've met this type before. These are the Jewish kids who rebelled against their parents and were knee-jerk liberals. Then, they have children and marry conservative people, and they become knee-jerk conservatives who love to tell people about their best-friend-who-is-their-child­'s-godmother/father-who-is (take your pick) gay/feminist/liberal/etc.

A knee jerk anything is an idiot--it doesn't matter if they are liberal or conservative or whatever. Yoffe's only real concern is herself and expressing her knee-jerk opinions. Any time she is caught contradicting herself or exposing her own cult-of-the-child agenda, she makes this crap up (or finds a similar letter and exaggerates it) to supposedly prove that other people are wrong.

Slate has really gone downhill. One can see pretty clearly why Prudie/Margo left. I am just glad that the real Prudie is dead, or the poor fellow would be spinning in his grave.

BTW, has everyone read the original Prudie's columns--they are an absolute hoot! The comparison makes it very clear that Yoffe is just a hack writer with a chip on her shoulder, trying to prove that she is a "real journalist" or whatever the heck she's trying to prove.

Please--Yoffe is an idiot. Please pull the plug. Please!

I love it when my partner fulfills my cuddling needs!

take a look at the photo credit. You're wasting pixels in that last sentence.

when Helen Gurley Brown was still editor of Cosmo, I read it. (Mostly for Irma Kurtz's Agony Column). It was cheesy then but man is it even worse now. At least I guess it still sucks, as I haven't read it in years.

They always used the same words and phrases ad nauseum. Why can't you just call it HAIR, folks? None of us refer to our HAIR as our "mane" or our "tresses". Urk.

Read Yoffe in XX Factor. You're way off on her politics.

If you find her column so horrific why do you even bother to continually read it? From the sound of this reply, you didn't just happen upon it today and find disgust in it but discovered it long ago and have come back for more.

I'm sorry, if I don't appreciate something the first time around I do not return for more of it.

I've argued this before, and I agree w/ the OP. Yoffe in XX Factor is trying too hard to show a more liberal side. Within she is a conservative, much as the OP describes. Especially in her moralizing, then it really shows. I think her choice of letters and responses is pretty illuminating. 'Cult of the Child'? Oh you betcha....

I bet she does go around saying, but one of my best friends is gay...(but deep inside I still don't think they should be getting married...can't say that out loud around here, though)

"If you find her column so horrific why do you even bother to continually read it?"

It's like a trainwreck, can't look away. And, if you don't read it, you have no context to understand the Fray that's talking about it...which is much more fun to read anyway. Thanks to the fact that some posters have a great sense of humor. (Which Yoffe lacks, by they way)

diotima:

Slate has really gone downhill. One can see pretty clearly why Prudie/Margo left. I am just glad that the real Prudie is dead, or the poor fellow would be spinning in his grave.

BTW, has everyone read the original Prudie's columns--they are an absolute hoot! The comparison makes it very clear that Yoffe is just a hack writer with a chip on her shoulder, trying to prove that she is a "real journalist" or whatever the heck she's trying to prove.

Please--Yoffe is an idiot. Please pull the plug. Please!

Thanks!

I started reading Slate when Margo Howard was Dear Prudence (she still gives good advice, but she was much more entertaining as Prudence). I never realized there was an earlier Prudence, and earlier columns. I've just read a couple, and they are indeed wonderful. Sigh...

Wow. Its one thing to say the first letter is a fake written by some idiot who is starved for attention. Its another thing to say Prudie is writing the letters herself to, as you said, manipulate the image of herself in the column. That would be completely unethical. Granted, she's just an advice columnist, but I'm sure Slate Magazine holds her to the same standards as any other journalist who writes for their magazine. Making up letters would be like making up sources. I think your assertions, absent any proof, are completely slanderous.

Besides, you don't think Prudie gets enough letters that she can't pick and chose the ones that will manipulate her image in the column?

Wait, maybe you were joking though. I mean, it seems such an absurd claim to make.

actually, i would like to argue your basic points.

i refer to my boyfriend as my "partner" quite often. i live with him, and i am devoted and committed to our relationship and so is he, but there just doesn't happen to be a ring on my finger, so i can't refer to him as my husband or my fiance. but boyfriend just sounds so... highschool... or something... sometimes. it smacks of impermance and the short term, which my relationship certainly is not. so he's my partner.

as for the rest of it, well, some people do talk that way. i know my journal has a few entries here and there with strikingly similar terminology (right down to "cuddling needs"). so just becuase YOU don't talk that way, doesn't mean that nobody does.

Actually the 'cuddling needs' struck me too but in a different way.

This woman has read a lot of self help books. If you'll read her letter you'll notice she very carefully follows the steps of 'how to get your needs met' even using the appropriate vocab. I think that is at the heart of the issue, she is doing everything right and still not getting what she wants!

I think those books need a starter section on 'how to determine if your needs are appropriate' with a final section on 'what to do if the guy is an ass and doesn't care about your needs'. Because the real world isn't as simple as the books make it seem.

For the answer to the question why letters require editing, please see the direct postings of so called real people on this forum. "Shiksa" below is so stellar in her incomprehensibility she's charming. That's the stuff you can't make up. You also can't answer it.

There is a kid question, a relationship question, a work question and some modern more type question. It's not politics at all. It's marketing.

Also, I have come to believe she working to thwart the Psuedies by giving them not much to work with, lately, for her own pleasure.

I'm such an idiot.  I just now realized Prudie isn't written by the same person it used to be.   I knew the picture looked different, but never caught that it was a completely different person.

 

Well yeah, no wonder I've been disappointed in the column for a while now, it's not the same authori.