It was a no-brainer that the O/C ContraClinton law professor was going to find a way to knock Hillary after yesterday’s hostage crisis:

Did she do anything? Other than canceling her appearances — which she had to do to show decent sensitivity — she made a lot of ineffectual phone calls. For 5 hours, we’re told, she “continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.” She says, “I knew I was bugging a lot of these people.”

Afterwards, she used the occasion to make a show of her emotions (or did you think she was cold and mechanical?). She said:

“It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time.”

Is that what you want in a President? Someone who feels extra confusion because she’s a mother?

But I don’t believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don’t happen to think it is a good script, because I don’t want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger. Yet that’s not Hillary. The only question is why she thought a statement like that was a good one. She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she’s unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.

Let’s consider the specifics of Ann’s language.

“ineffectual phone calls”: if you heard someone was holding hostages and demanding to talk to you, would you be making phone calls, asking if there was something you could or should do to defuse the situation? And after getting that question answered, would you ask other questions, offer encouragement or gratitude? I hope you would.

That sounds like being responsible, concerned, compassionate and grateful, to me. Ineffectual is a judgment rendered without any idea what transpired in those conversations.

“she used the occasion to make a show of her emotions”: the occasion required her to issue a response once the situation was defused. It ‘used’ her. And if she displayed emotions, that becomes ‘making a show’, disregarding the possibility that genuine emotions were present.

Politicians, to succeed, have to make a lot of calculations, and certainly, at times, they display a contrived clumsiness in doing so. But to suggest they never display genuine feelings is to dehumanize them, something that’s typically reserved for war time enemies. What brings out this wartime level opposition in Althouse? From her past writings about the Clintons, it’s conceivable there’s some jealousy playing out here. She knocked Jessica Valenti for havng the temerity to be young, big breasted and smiling in a group photo op with Hillary’s husband. Is she also fulfilling the stereotype of assuming that Bill’s marital infidelities are caused by Hillary, who must be ‘frigid’?

It certainly seems she clings to the belief that Hillary’s robotic and only can put emotions on as ‘a show.’ How 1940s!

“Someone who feels extra confusion”: what Hillary actually described was “a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time”. Ann zeroed in on one of those for this critique because most of the others wouldn’t fit her narrative.

“But I don’t believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don’t happen to think it is a good script, because I don’t want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger.”

The campaign volunteers were young. One had a baby. In such a situation, I know how my mind would logically work and I know the paternalistic emotions I’d feel. To a sixty year old, those volunteers would seem about the same age as my children. I would not roll up in a daddyesque ball, and Hillary didn’t roll up into anything either. And after criticizing Hillary for faking emotions, Ann turns around and suggests she’s too emotional.

“She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she’s unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.”

‘She probably’. Good guess? ‘Widely held belief’…. held by her political foes including those in the media. ‘Delight all the ladies’? Hmmmm…. was that suggestive of a lesbian motivation? Sure sounds like it to me. And since when did it become fashionable to call women ‘ladies’ again? (the latter’s the smallest point of my critique, though I know quite a few women who get offended because of the latent meanings that might be hidden in that word.)

And those ladies ‘lap up emotional drivel’. How Freudian is that? Was Ann actually visualizing Hillary’s vagina as she typed that?

So there you have Ann’s portrait of Hillary: ineffectual, cold, robotic, faking emotions while rolled up into a ball, too mommyesque, pleasing those other type of women.

Give up, Hillary, Ann’s got you surrounded. Keep your hands where she can see them, drop your husband, and kick him across the floor to Ann.

And let me point out that I’m not a Hillary supporter because I don’t like her record of accomplishment while in the public spotlight. I make no negative presumptions about her as a mother, wife, woman or friend. I don’t make it a practice to imagine what goes on behind the bedroom door of politicians and don’t think my readers would be interested in such thoughts if I had them. Ann Althouse teaches the practice of law, which is generally a dispassionate thing, where logic prevails.

But if Ann’s OC Contra-Clinton thinking exemplifies how she makes her political choices, it certainly makes me wonder about her teaching methods. in fact, her thinking suggests she’s the student, relying on her pupils to develop her impressions about the Clintons. I’m just glad she’s not teaching poli-sci, where she’d likely have to consider whether Macchiavelli was ‘do-able&