Advice columns are not what they used to be

I used to enjoy reading Dear Abby and Ann Landers when they were written by the original sisters. You know the ones I mean--the ones with the same picture featuring the same helmethead hairdo for 50 years. Both are dead or incapacitated now.

Their answers to readers' vexing problems were not outstanding, but the questions themselves were fun. I remember a long-standing, impassioned discussion on different ways of placing toilet paper in its holder. I forget what was decided, but you can be sure it was earth-shattering.

Readers anxiously inquired on what to do when in-laws made unexpected visits; when neighbors pranced around nude in front of open windows; when their married lovers claimed that it was only a matter of time before they got divorced from their wives who did not understand them (Ann and Abby were quite caustic about this one). Girls wanted to know whether marriage would rehabilitate their drunken fiances and turn them into solid citizens if they just loved them enough. (No.) In short, the whole catalog of human vexation passed before our eyes.

Nowadays all their successors ever print are articles about celebrating Mother's Day, not driving drunk, and writing to our soldiers in Iraq. We already know that!