The following comments have been edited for length.

Comment to Joan Ganz Cooney’s Response to David Rodh’s Kidnapping on June 29
By Lila Kuh on 06/29/2009 8:40 am

Joan, I completely agree.  The public’s so-called "right to know" does not extend to possibly getting people killed.  While we do have freedom of the press, words have consequences, and the press should responsibly weigh those consequences before publishing. 
I just wish that EVERYONE would weigh the consequences of their words before publishing… tweeting… emailing… blogging… we all should remember that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

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Comment to Marie Brenner’s Interview With Jane Stanton Hitchcock on June 29
By Washington Cube on 06/29/2009 7:03 am

Having been born and raised in the Washington Ms. Brenner is describing, I would agree with everything she says, minus one.  That old Georgetown power had ended before Mrs. Graham.  Granted, Mrs. Graham’s passing was the end of an era, but the power had shifted some time before.  
I wound up with some of Mrs. Graham’s clothes hangers, oddly enough.  Her family sold things off to various shops around town, and some friends of mine went and bought peach Dior padded hangers from the Graham estate sales and gave them to me as a symbol of the changing of "old" Washington society.  Another friend, (living elsewhere now, but born and raised in Georgetown) gets into conversations with me about our dinosaur ways.  Things we were taught to do as children that people wouldn’t even think about now.  I had my own stationery and started writing thank you notes at a very young age, for example. Not crossing your legs in public.  Not letting your back touch the chair. Being "dressed" properly in the city. 
Sometimes I see one of those aged dames hit the street on a summer day (and it’s rare…they didn’t come by the name cave dweller for nothing.)  They have on their print dress and crochet gloves and hat.  They carry a parasol. Maybe they are wearing a long chiffon scarf trailing in the slight breeze.  Their pace is slow and stately.  Their posture is impeccable.  It’s like watching the Queen Mary or Titanic sail down the brick and cobblestoned streets…or the very last of an extinct species.

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Comment to a Liz Smith Post on Remembering Michael Jackson on June 29
By Frannie Em on 06/29/2009 2:35 am

Thank you Liz.  Your article was brilliant.  I think your truth about him is so smart. 

I have met Michael before.  I was very lucky and he was sweet and generous and kind.  It was at a theater and I was very very pregnant with my first child.  I introduced myself and told him how much I liked his debut solo album and he was sweet open and kind.  He had not started the plastic surgery nightmare.  Just a sweet kid that took a chance and broke from the family group to try on his own.  I remember he was playing with a yo yo.  He had one bodyguard.  Oddly enough, I remember him most from that.  I was places that he was at times, but that memory sticks out the most. 
I came to know Michael Jackson in other ways.  A very good childhood and college friend of mine was his chef.  Her daughter spent time at my house and when they went on tour, J lived with us.  J knew Michael very well.  She spent the night over there with other children and always said that Michael would never touch or molest a child.  Therefore I never believed the allegations.  My friend worked for him for several years and she would share with me how smart Michael was and how different his private persona was from his public persona.  She was always impressed with his integrity.
When he started his journey of plastic surgery I asked her why and she said that he always had people around him that would tell him anything he wanted to hear.  Parasites and hangers on that thought maybe a little of his fame would rub off on them.

I called her one day because one of my oldest son’s friends, who was a huge Michael Jackson fan, father had suddenly died of a heart attack - he was in his 40’s.  I wondered if we could get an autographed picture of him for the friend.  The response was immediate and more than a picture arrived, there was so much love and generosity it made me cry. Once he didn’t want to go to a Gladys Knight and the Pips concert and my husband and I got his tickets.  He was always thoughtful.

I guess we all feel that we all knew Michael Jackson in a personal way. He was so vulnerable and exposed to us because of what he did to his face, he did not want to look like his father.  He wanted stardom, adoration and privacy which just don’t mix.  I am so sorry it turned out this way.  It didn’t have to end like this.

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Comment to a wOw Conversation About Domestic Violence on July 2
By F Fox on 07/02/2009 4:53 am

Abuse is both personal and cultural. That is, you can have personalities that will tend toward abusiveness in any culture, but you can also have cultures that condone or glorify abusiveness. Response to abusiveness in part has to do with the very practical issue of money, as Laura Ward indicated above. It also has to do with skills or intelligence. Tina Turner left Ike and took nothing with her, but she was a talented singer with contacts in the industry.

There is a lot of to be said for the point of view that if you see it as a child it is your universe, and you expect the world to be that way. Children have to learn, sometimes repeatedly, that there are other ways to handle living.

I think abuse is also physically corrosive and eventually it—I am writing of psychological abuse as with physical abuse it is obvious—takes its toll on the body of the abused.

When the ladies of wOw discuss such a subject, it would be useful to have a member or two who came from the other side of the tracks.