Don't Mess With Modern Love

Bonnie writes that the New York Times op-ed page should be a fiction-free zone, and that's a perfectly respectable opinion. But to suggest that fiction should replace Modern Love in the paper's Styles section -- those are fighting words.

I love the Modern Love column. It's one of my favorite parts of the Sunday Times. Just yesterday an Indian man published a column about the satisfactions of an arranged marriage. We've heard from a transgender parent and a man who loves his stepfather, despite the stepfather's unfortunate similarities to Bernard Madoff. We've had bad boyfriend columns, cancer columns, gay and straight and divorce columns.

Schadenfreude? Empathy? Recognition? Whatever I'm feeling, I can't tear myself away.

Now, I admit, I love the Times' wedding announcements. You never know who you will find there -- old friends, work acquaintances, wildly unlikely ethnic pairings that make you say to yourself, "Is this a great country or what?"

I also love The Washington Post's Date Lab, "where we match you up and send you out." The incompatibility rate is depressingly high, but every once in a while a spark bursts into flame and I'm motivated to check in again the next week.

I am a serious person, I really am. I 'm taking time out right now from a column on stimulus spending to write this. Consider it escapism for a political nerd -- or Mother Goose for grown-ups -- or just gossip of a higher order. But don't take it away, please.