Two weeks ago, a witty reader who regularly emails me made an elliptical reference to fellow columnist Doug Saunders having a go at me. It took me some time to track down his meaning, what with being so busy reading Bill Clinton's autobiography, my first Gogol (that's Nikolai, not Ivanka) and that holy of holies, an unread P.G. Wodehouse, while re-taining the garden shed. It's a glamorous life; the pay is terrible but the work is hard, as they say.

Mr. Saunders is a colleague so I will respond with goodwill to his comments about me in his column about the "s-word."

What could he mean? Santiago de Compostela? Saddle sores? Stephen Sarper? He meant "socialism" which he thinks-wrongly, I'm afraid-is no different from communism and anti-Americanism. This is dull stuff. We shall leave it by the side of the road.

I regret that Mr. Saunders watched my interview with that awful Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, a man of whom it can be said that, if he had another brain, he'd have just the one, a man with just enough brain to make a blue jay fly crooked (thanks, P.G.). No one should watch him. Hundreds of Americans wrote to me to apologize for his existence.

"Are you a socialist?" Mr. O'Reilly asked me, and since I had six seconds to reply, I gave my sweetest smile and said: "Certainly." I would have ventured into "democratic socialist" but couldn't resist the pop-pop-popping sounds of blood vessels all over the American South as men tattooed in unusual places oiled their guns and cursed those dern Canajuns.

Yes, I am a tease, even a goad.

But what surprised me was Mr. Saunders's statement that a woman "who writes a weekly Style column devoted to her consumption of luxury goods" is unqualified to be a socialist.

He was attacking my shopping. Them's fightin' words. Only my husband is allowed to attack my shopping.

He does not.

And so we must talk about pleasure and who is morally permitted to enjoy "objects of." Suddenly, it seemed to be 1945. I was inhabiting a Nancy Mitford novel, The Pursuit of Love, in which a beautiful and cosseted Linda Radlett falls in love with a lefty. That what is called a parlour pink, a champagne socialist.

I do drink champagne, but I am not anything near rich or even financially and professionally secure, as I do not belong to a union.^* I find unionized right-wingers a bit iffy, but they'd be foolish not to grab the chance. I simply believe in social justice and want my taxes to help the poor.

The social insult "parlour pink" was invented in the 1920s. The important thing, Linda Radlett said, is to wear wool and cotton to lefty parties, rather than silk, which I do. One must wear only costume jewelry, which I do.

There are very few luxury goods in my Style column, which is named Bought because I pay for the stuff myself and don't accept freebies. The column was commissioned only because I have an irreverent approach to consumption, rare in this era of label worships, and also my editor thinks I'm bats.

Socialists are not barred from sensuality, from appreciating art and beauty and baubles.

The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy wrote Ithaka, which is about life's quest and is one of my favourite poems. It was read, to my astonishment, at the funeral of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a Democrat, whose financial insecurity as a child had marked her adult life. Some of the lines were, I think, Jackie making a point about the vicious attacks she had suffered for spending her husbands' wealth.

The standard view that the right wing has of the left wing-and typically it is particularly harsh on women-is that we should be smelly creatures (saves on soap) who crochet shapeless clothes out of hemp and live on soy dust and road kill. I do praise expensive makeup in my Bought column. I suppose a true socialist would mix her face paint up in her ratty little kitchen, using cake flour as foundation and charcoal from her wood fire as kohl eyeliner. For lipstick, she'd wet a red Smartie and rub it back and forth on her pinch lips. She'd make Viet Cong sandals out of old car tires. She'd shoplift and call it Redistribution of Property.

The message is that socialists shouldn't buy nice things. It's almost as bad as another conservative article of faith, that feminists should be ugly. It's why Naomi Wolf was pilloried for saying women were being battered by the beauty myth. And when Andrea Dworkin wrote about rape, the right wing said she was too ugly to be raped.

On and one it goes, this notion that a political stance wraps everything you are expected to say in a neat brown paper parcel. Communists, like the radical right, are very strict about deviations from the party line. They wouldn't like me one bit.

*The Globe is unionized. Its staff don't like this to be known.