So now I'm a Madonna fan? Okay.

I keep thinking, for some reason, about Gary Sitton. Holy shit; I miss that man. But I only really saw him through one lens—the lens of his writing. It was, they tell me, a good deal more complex for those around him—particularly the women in his life.

I used to copyedit Bear's columns and articles for Hunting Magazine—as gently as I could, but we did have to have a couple of conversations that ranged from normal author-query/fact-checking concerns to one rather extravagant dispute over an adjective of his that I had recklessly (recklessly!) deleted. I was crushed to have upset him, of course.

My favorite quotes of Sitton's:

Gary Sitton, on Madonna:

We stayed that night at his house, with his charming wife Madonna—that would be Madonna the charming lady, not Madonna the thermonuclear tramp.

Yeah. I thought it was a bit harsh toward the Material Girl. After all, Madonna the singer made it okay, for one brief shining moment in the 1980s, for a woman have breasts—and I'll always be grateful to her for that.

But there was no mistaking where he was coming from. It wasn't a question of him wanting to have it both ways, as so many of us do these days. (Such as me: I want to joke around, pretend I'm one of the guys, but never ever have that repartee hit a nerve. That, of course, is impossible, unless I'm only going to hang out with people I've known for 20 years.)

Gary Sitton, on popular culture:

There is much to be said for good, old-fashioned prudery.

And he practiced what he preached. At least, more than most of the rest of us. Again, there is The Proverb of Martin to consider: "everyone's a hypocrite now and then." Uh-huh.

Gary Sitton, on life:

Be safe, and shoot straight.

Please do.

Special thanks, as always, to those who try to treat their fellow human beings with respect—male and female, gay and straight. It ain't easy, is it?

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to think of a way to make this joke, when I saw Glenn's post.

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

I mean, not a straightline, but . . . you see where I'm coming from.

Anyway. The only thing worse than a practitioner of the Religion of Peace is a Chosen Practitioner of the Religion of Peace.

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I know; I'm late. Blame the home renovation scene around here.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News conducted interviews with some of the top writers from the distaff side of the rightosphere: syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, who runs her own enormously successful blog and is also the proprietress of Hot Air; Amanda Carpenter; Rachel Lucas; Ericka Andersen of Human Events and Redstate; and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

I thought it was courageous for John to do this article, because he is very often accused of being an online sexist, which he isn't, quite. He's just ready to offer his opinion that sometimes a woman's looks can be helpful to her in the field of "citizen journalism," or whatever we're calling weblogging these days. And in point of fact looks do matter, though they won't make up for dull writing.

[Editor's Note: A few paragraphs of this post, upon review, were found to be very dull, and did not meet the . . . um . . . high standards of this blog. To the staff writers: Can we lay off the free-association, here? Blah, blah, blah. This is, ultimately, extremely soporific, and you aren't Virginia Fucking Woolf. Why not just ask the reader to count sheep?—one, two, three . . . ]

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