louise on the left (coast)

As most of you know, if you've followed my blog in the past, then you know I have a severely peanut allergic daughter, who I am fiercely protective of. I try to be understanding about how little people comprehend about anaphylaxis, but sometimes when they choose to be completely stupid, I just see red. Last month was one of those times. Just to bring you up to speed. I'd responded somewhat fiercely to Joel Stein's annoying piece that ran in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago that ripped into the parents of peanut allergic kids suggesting it wasn't a real concern and that our desire to create drama and "specialness" for our kids was really the cause of it all. In any event, I never got any response from either him via The Los Angeles Times, but I did get a response from him via his personal facebook page, of all things. And I really wanted to share with you what his response was, given that one of his main excuses for writing the piece was th

So, I just came across an Op-Ed piece by Joel Stein in today's Los Angeles Times: Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention span">Some kids really do have food allergies. But most just have bad reactions to their parents' mass hysteria. Oh, really ??? Well, below is my full response to Mr. Stein's Op-Ed piece, which I tried (unsuccessfully) posting on the LA Times website. Unfortunately, at the time I kept getting an error message stating that it was "too long." Of course, I did have to fight the image of Mr. Stein sitting on the other side of the computer screen shooting down angry responses like rubber ducks at the county fair. I even began "testing" the Los Angeles Times Comment Page by posting far shorter "messages" like: "Dear Mr. Stein, You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch." But even that came back with an error message. However, since none of these visualizations helped my blood pressure, I decided to