penders - 9:57 am on Feb 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

You don't need to (always) "point selectors toward the direct parents"... in doing so you are simply increasing the selectors specificity. (See #3 here... Cascading Order [w3.org]) p.dsq-widget-meta could have worked OK, but another style was probably overriding it.

The browser tools in Chrome and Firefox should tell you from where your styles are coming from.