Supportive of your husband? You Stepford b@#$!

I knew this would become news within seconds. No limit to the personal attacks between the two sides in this country.

Kudos to Darleen and Michelle Malkin for pointing out the "compassionate, liberal, open-minded" response to Alito's wife's tears in the courtroom.

Granted, crying in public might make you a target for people who already don't like you. I tend to avoid doing it because I'm somewhat of a closed person, and I don't want to be laughed at. But this?

How does tearing up at watching one's husband get grilled on the stand make one a Stepford wife? Emotional? Sure. Stepford? No.

This is like the accusation that Laura Bush is a Stepford wife because she's too polite and deferent and supportive around the President when he debates or appears in public. Heard that one after the debates. She "agrees" with him too much, and "smiles too much" when he's saying things that Democrats disagree with. And she doesn't speak her mind to disagree.

What is the First Lady supposed to do? Get in an argument with the Prez right there on national/international TV? Slam his reputation publicly when she disagrees with something?

Malkin quotes John Podhoretz's observation of the irony of calling someone standing opposite a Kennedy a "pampered Stepford wife:"

A Kennedy who has never known a moment's worry about money is now grilling a lifelong middle-class public servant with no family fortune from New Jersey about the public servant's mutual fund -- which, if memory serves, was and is the world's most popular mutual fund, currently serving more than 18 million investors. Teddy Kennedy, by contrast, is showered with money from his family trust.

Conservatives are not the only ones who are rich and pampered, folks. I suppose that makes Hillary and Jackie Stepfords too?

Also, how many liberal public figures are publicly unsupportive of their husbands in order to prove themselves as "independent womyn?" Didn't Hillary stick by Bill even though his cheating? Wasn't Jackie Kennedy fairly smily and first-lady-ish (and rich, to boot?) I'd say the Kerry's have a pretty tight relationship, and Teresa told the Repubs to "stuff it;" she didn't say it to John. Basically every single wife of a public figure, in both political camps, has "stood by her man" at least in the public eye.

Daily Kos calls the tears "staged." I'm not inside her head, so I can't prove otherwise. But if they were genuine, then taunting her for it is just immature and intentionally divisive. Showing love and support for your spouse, especially in public, is not a Stepford, submissive thing to do. It is called marriage, and in the case of the First Lady, public decorum. Stop calling conservative women names every, single time they show even an oodle of love for the men they married. Your women do it too, and it isn't wrong.

Oh, and the part about visiting a black neighborhood to see what they go through? Just because someone doesn't go through ghetto-level hardship does not mean they are not allowed to be human. People hurt, and people cry, and money and privilege do not buy happiness.

This reminds me of the social work article I read for class one time that said that if a white businessman comes into therapy, and a single black mother comes at the same time but with less severe depression, that she should still be seen first regardless. That's a load of hooie. People's emotions have nothing to do with their economic or racial background, and to tell someone to suck it up and not show their feelings, ever, because they aren't in an oppressed group, is beyond cold and unfeeling. Call us uncompassionate all you want, but don't act like that and then claim to be compassionate yourself.