"Another harsh critic [of the emoticon] is Michele Farinet, a parent coordinator in an elementary school in Manhattan who spends much of her days answering and responding to e-mails of the (largely professional) body of parents. The whole subject touches a raw nerve.

"'To me, it's like bad moviemaking, where as soon as Dad grabs the puppy, the shot immediately goes to Junior's teary face — like the director does not trust the audience to have an appropriately developed emotion by itself,' Ms. Farinet wrote in an e-mail. 'That's what emoticons do. PLEASE don't 'show' me that I should be happy-faced or sad-faced or that you are sad-faced or happy-faced.

"'Can you imagine,' wrote Ms. Farinet, 'reading the end of THE GREAT GATSBY like that?: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past :-( '"

--New York Times, "If You're Happy And You Know It, Must I Know Too?" Now I feel like an emoticon moderate in comparison...