Oh come now, little lady.

Online cultural pundit Ann Althouse this morning takes issue with the Irish version of the marital eve, old-wives advice tale: "Just close your eyes and think of England."

I did not think modern American columnists, especially females who want to be regarded as feminist, would repeat something like this without disapproval, but here's Dowd adopting and admiring it:

Calling his deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly “stupid” and “deceitful,” he threw her off the bridge, without talking to her himself or, as Niall O’Dowd slyly wrote in IrishCentral.com, even extending the courtesy of the old Irish wedding night admonition: “Brace yourself, Bridget.”

Irish culture can be a teasing one, and it's actually produced plenty of strong women, whose accomplishments perhaps come from the strength found in pushing back, gently and with considerable verbal skill, I might add. Crude and raw perhaps, but vulgar not so much.

To me,
this is ultimately a smarter route than say, backpedaling: depending on junior, sexually conservative male writers like Ross Douthat to protect the sensitivities of upper middle class women, who increasingly have an outsized say in defining women's issues and the true problems confronting them in the economy today.

Where the personal is political, the political becomes personal more quickly, and the grotesque abuse that liberal, feminist writers can receive for being liberal feminists is a scandal that conservatives, especially, need to acknowledge and deplore.
...
Sometimes this rebellion is just coarse and libertine: think of lad magazines, or the world of pick-up artists, or Seth MacFarlane on Oscar night. But where it intersects with status anxieties, personal failure and sexual frustration, it can turn vicious — in effect, scapegoating women (those frigid castraters, those promiscuous teases) for the culture’s failure to deliver a beer-commercial vision of male happiness.
...
Instead, it needs to be answered, somehow, with a more compelling vision of masculine goals, obligations and aspirations. Forging this vision is a project for both sexes. Living up to it, and cleansing the Internet of the worst misogyny, is ultimately a task for men.

Addressing conservative male behavior is exactly what editor O'Dowd is doing here with his colorful description of how Ms. Kelly indeed got screwed -- unless you just think she screwed herself alone.*

Don't focus on the superficial offenses that honestly do no damages, look deeper at what -- and who -- is really hurting women's progress today. Sometimes the seeming saviors carry you back to same old abode.
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* I don't, because that background -- Catholic schooling all the way up -- does not generally reward the behaviors of someone who would step out of line and act independently in the planning and crafting stages, in such a big way.

There's simply no pattern of such independent action indicated in her past. Organizing effectively  somebody else's plans, with specific focus on the fine details, appears to be more Ms. Kelly's forte and previous role in Team Christie.

Look closer.