LORNA SORE

“Seems that Scott Brown, a Massachusetts state senator who opposes gay marriage, had some foul language written about him and his daughter (an American Idol contestant) by high school students on the Facebook page of a pro-gay-marriage history teacher. Naturally, he responded the way any mature adult in a position of authority would: by appearing at an assembly at the school that the kids attended and reading aloud their obscenity-laden comments, with their names, while horrified teachers begged him to stop. “

“Why do we single out Feb. 14 to celebrate romance? It’s said to be the day St. Valentine, a Roman priest during the third century, was executed. Legends about Valentine vary. Some say he was killed for illegally marrying Roman soldiers; others claim it was for helping Christians escape punishment at the hands of the pagan emperor. Just before his death, it’s believed that he sent an affectionate note to the beautiful daughter of his jailer—the very first Valentine.”

“Hillary is an avatar of an existential dread skulking in the hearts of every couple who’ve tried to put together a life since the feminist revolution. This anxiety explains why the darkest question a liberal feminist can ask is: Why didn’t she leave that son of a bitch? And it’s why the coarsest question a conservative man can ask is: Who would do the bitch? Both point to deep fears that emerged alongside feminism, grounded, as every question since that revolution is, in the politics of the bedroom.

Hillary has come to embody a dark fear in the hearts of modern men: the wife who neglects the joys of the bedroom for her career. The middle years of marriage are hard enough (or so I have read), trying to keep the flame flickering amid the anxieties of bills, the call of career, the squall of little children. That’s the age-old stuff. Add to that a novel stress on the guy: a new destructive Oedipal force right at his side, his wife. She wants a career equal to, if not better than, her husband’s. Will she be more famous, make more money, hold more prestige?”

“How about “cold,” “flat” and “unwomanly” (National Review’s John Podhoretz); “robotic” (the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan) “angry” (Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman); a lesbian who conceived Chelsea after being raped by Bill (biographer Ed Klein); “Nurse Ratched,” “a castrating female persona” (Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker on The Chris Matthews Show); “that buck-tooth witch, Satan,” “worse” than Osama bin Laden (Don Imus). Put “Hillary” into a search engine with “Lady Macbeth,” “dragon lady,” “ice queen,” “bitch” or “hag” and up come hundreds of thousands of hits. Oooh, an ambitious woman! A woman who isn’t thinking, every minute of every day, about how to make men feel big and strong! I just might vote for her to give these pathetic misogynists what for, and so might the rest of my coven.”