A couple posts back, I chastised Claire Readhead of the Cornell Daily Sun for her rambling dialogues, asking if her latest column was “insightful prose, art, or just the output of a lazy columnist?”

Today in Claire’s column she responds to my criticism:

The “cutting-edge conservative commentary” of Cornell University slammed my column; I take this to mean that I am doing something right. “Sounding the Trumpet” accused me of being lazy, to which I respond that I view laziness as a continuum. There are many degrees of laziness. Some have refined it to an art; others dabble.

For instance, when I was dancing in France and had the choice between going to rehearsal and sunning my bosom on the sandy shores of Cannes, I chose the latter. Those at the Trumpet may consider this behavior remiss, but had any of them ever been a ballerina in southern France, they too may have thrown assiduity to the wind and basked in the luxuriance of sloth, squinting into the sunlight at yachts gliding by and sipping a G&T with cucumber.

I was also charged with the ubiquitous crimes of rambling and being silly: true and truer. In addition, they lamented that The Sun had once produced the likes of E.B. White, and now they are producing the likes of — well — me. I happen to rather admire E.B., especially his children’s stories, but then again, that is probably because I am silly. Yet, I really parted from the E.B. camp when I discovered that he had co-authored a book entitled Is Sex Necessary? If I were to write such a book it would consist of one page on which would be inscribed the simple word — YES. Perhaps I would add the phrase, “especially during long and dreary Ithacan winters.” (Honestly, E.B., you should know better.)

All Cornellians understand that the only way to make it through the last months of the fall semester is to acquiesce to the pressures of coupledom. . . .

If you are dying to find out about the pressures of coupledom, you can read the rest (in a list form) here.

Claire, if you’re going to mention us could you have the courtesy to put a link to us in your column?

Also, perhaps you could notice that “cutting edge conservative commentary” is not our name, it’s our tagline. Our name is Sounding the Trumpet. We are also a blog, which is something that’s not at all clear to readers from your reference to us.