In a series of posts to the comments section last night, Ann Althouse took issue with my earlier item regarding her sexual analysis of the Hillary Clinton "Sopranos" ad. I am, evidently, a "prissy stick in the mud" with a "low level" of "diligence and comprehension." By the time she wrote a later post at her own site, she had worked herself into the full froth that will be familiar to anyone who saw her iconic bloggingheads meltdown, referring to me as "the most pathetic member of the swarm." She's demanded multiple apologies. I fear the best I can do is to say that I'm rather sorry to have engaged her at all. Readers can judge for themselves my diligence, comprehension, prissiness, etc. But for the record: 1) I never claimed that she "threatened to sue" a blogger who insulted her; I described her as "suggesting she could sue him," which she did. My main point, as she knows, was to point out that exactly three sentences after complaining that the blogger wrote "sexual things" about her, she theorized that he had a small penis and would therefore prefer phallic calamari to vagina-like onion rings. A lovely subsequent Althouse post drove this same point home visually. (Honestly, that may be it for me and fried food.) 2) She claims that it was only the single line--"I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion"--that was intended to generate traffic and not the item overall, a clarification that I'm happy to accept. I do find it odd that she's so defensive about her intent to generate traffic with the item given the glee with which she's repeatedly announced her success, even citing the metrics used (Site Meter, Memeorandum, do we really care?). And I find the idea that this traffic surge was due to that one relatively obscure line, rather than her larger psychosexual observations, preposterous on its face. 3) Finally, I agree that it was a "humorous post," though perhaps not in exactly the sense Althouse means. As I noted earlier, what I found most interesting was not the initial item but the thousands of subsequent words (and climbing!) that she spent on elaborate justifications and vituperative name-calling. That said, I'm pleased that she subscribes to the magazine. We're not picky. --Christopher Orr