Huh.

[bjarvis]

Every now & again, I read the "Dear Prudence" advice column on Salon.com. A large percentage of her responses to pleas for help usually contain no advice at all, instead pour abuse & scorn upon the correspondent. Until recently.

I've read two columns back to back in which Prudence agreed the correspondent had a valid issue and provided useful advice. In my experience, this is nearly a record run for her. I wonder if they have a guest writer this week.

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I think the columnist has too frequently let the original offender off the hook entirely while berating the correspondent for bothering her with annoying queries. I'd be happier if "Dear Prudence" simply stated openly, I'm not interested in your sad lives and let me go back to reading Proust while sipping wine. It would be more honest.

I can deal with the "grow the fuck up" responses, but I'd vastly prefer "grow the fuck up and, yeah, the person you're complaining about needs to grow the fuck up too." Too much of the former, nearly zero of the latter.