All the president's homeys

Who knew that MySpace is now the paper of record?

I'll give you a moment to catch your breath after that shocker. Meanwhile, I'll fill you in on how I made this discovery.

The other day my 12-year-old daughter stormed into my room in a fury. "Anyone can see your MySpace page!" she complained. "I told my friend you had one, and she found it. And it mentions my name. It's not fair!"

Ah, the resounding cry of American children: "It's not fair!" Poverty, famine, disease--these things aren't fair. But economically comfortable suburban kids who aren't allowed MySpage pages when their mothers have them are not high on my sympathy list.

"If you didn't want her seeing my page, you shouldn't have told her I had one," I pointed out. It's not as though any kid that age would do a random search for local moms on MySpace and whoops, there I'd be.

"But all my friends will see that you have a page!" Fiona wailed. She was truly distressed. Her other friends have pages, although the site asks for members to be at least 14. I won't let her break the rules, and besides, I'm envisioning pedophiles hiding behind every link. But I maintain a page so that I can check periodically to see what her friends are up to and if she's lied about her age to set up a page; and now anyone who cares to search for local moms can see that. I understand her concern, but too bad. Mom's got a page. Stop blabbing about it if you're embarrassed.

Then yesterday, I saw that the Washington Post Magazine is looking for a new columnist with a "fresh yet familiar voice." For someone who's been daydreaming lately about writing a column someday, this was an opportunity not to be missed. So I copied a couple of these blog entries into an e-mail and sent it along to the editors just in case they might give me a shot.

I don't expect to hear from them. But I would hate myself forever for not trying, and believe me, over the years I've learned to handle rejection. I've had plenty of practice at it.

Now, Fiona was delighted that I sent in the samples. I warned her that if I was selected--which wasn't likely--that might not be such a great thing for her. I'd write about her occasionally, and possibly a million people would read about it. Didn't she hate that I mentioned her on the MySpace page? This is the Post.

"No, Mom, that's totally cool," she said. "Mention me all you want. It's not like it's MySpace. No one I know will see it in the paper."

I think the Post should get a MySpace page.