Tag: dear prudence

Dear Margo

I’m taking a break from work today. I’ve been down with a cold since last Wednesday, and sitting in an office all day with the AC on isn’t really good for me. As soon as I step in there my nose stops up. So anyway, before I get in bed for some more rest, I thought I’d introduce another one of the agony aunt columns I read. This one’s Dear Margo, written by Margo Howard. It’s updated every Thursday and Friday at wowowow.com. I’ve been following Margo since she wrote Dear Prudence for slate.com (before the current one took over), and to be honest I’ve never much liked her advice. She’s a little too permissive – anything pretty much goes, and even when the writer is clearly an idiot she comes down very gently on them. Much of her advice is fine, just not as tough as I would like. Stylistic differences, maybe?

Pros: Has a comments part for readers to give their opinions.

Cons: Only comes out twice a week, advice a little too namby-pamby

Dear Prudence

Dear Prudence comes out every Thursday morning at slate.com. Both the questions and her answers are very detailed, and afterwards you can jump into The Fray, as Slate calls their forums, to discuss her answers further. The annoying thing is that few of the problems are real problems. Most of them are from people who know what they should be doing and just want an advice columnist to tell them to do it, which Prudie does faithfully. E.g. “I think my husband’s son isn’t his, should I tell him?” Ma’am, you know you shouldn’t, that’s why you’re writing in instead of telling him.

The current column writer has been criticized for a pro-marriage pro-baby stance, as if that’s a bad thing, but since I’m pro those things as well I’m in her corner. I wished the column came out more often, so Slate answered our wishes by creating a live advice chat corner on Mondays. That’s just as interesting and features more questions, albeit more trivial ones.

Pluses: Detailed questions and answers, good advice, archives going back all the way to 1998, forums for more discussion

Minuses: Only comes out once a week (fixed now, but I stopped reading it), a lot of the answers are obvious, Prudie’s bad puns grate on the nerves sometimes, sometimes she’s a little too liberal for my tastes.