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I can spot a politically liberal woman, inevitably a stout but frequently passed over feminist, from one town away.
Fast heading for the Age of Prune, she is typically middle-aged and haughtily unmarried. She also is sallow-skinned with jealousy of women who are happily wrapped in the arms of their men.
Having memorized the Book of Liberal, she wears an angry streak to the office every morning — for good reason. Because the sun rose. The sun set. Or it didn’t show up at all.
The girls from the Age of Prune have a motto: It’s all right if our married “sisters” are smilingly swimming in wedded bliss, but do they have to flaunt it?
Who Needs Marriage?
These, you understand, are the same old Prunes-to-be who arrogantly announced 25 years ago that marriage was too traditional for them. They would have their own children, by golly, without the benefit of a (ugh) man, even if their only companion was a tomato can or a three-legged feral cat.
Gov. Spitzer’s intersection with the law, which became public at a press conference yesterday afternoon, set off the feminists again, as if they had been pushed off their favorite barstool.
This morning all across America, the sputtering, frustrated Princesses of the Age of Prune were dripping wet with fury. Or is it envy?
They were drooling from their sagging, generally virginal, lips because Gov. Spitzer’s gorgeous wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, true to the tradition of Tammy Wynette, decided to stand by her man at the press conference.
Members of the Age of Prune called her a traitor to her gender, as feminists tend to react toward sensible women who conduct themselves traditionally and responsibly.
What the Heck Is Love?
If she didn’t have the courage to kill, or at least injure him last Friday when the FBI informed Mr. Spitzer they had the goods on him in a prostitution sting, the feminists fumed, why didn’t she at least have the decency to embarrass him by divorcing him over the weekend?
Love is a concept that flew right by the feminists who said they could live without it, sailing into forever-after with their favorite tomato cans.
Take Amy Ephron, a novelist who is not so novel. She was the face of the Age of Prune this morning on the oh-so-liberal website, the Huffington Post.
So Humiliating — for Me?
Pulling herself up by her sagging skin, Ms. Ephron wept as she typed the following why-oh-why words at Huffington:
“Why do they show up? Why did Silda Spitzer appear at her husband's side at his press conference? The picture in The New York Times is so telling, so sad, so perfectly humiliating. And you just want to ask, why? Why do political wives — especially when they seemingly have no political aspirations of their own, it's not like Mrs. Spitzer is going to run for office — show up for their husbands when their husbands have behaved so badly?”
Patt Morrison, the featherweight feminist from the Los Angeles Times, also stomped her Mary Janes on the ground this morning at the Huffington Post, where what she wrote made her sound like a high-pitched Elmer Fudd:
“Why do so many wives of famous men suck it up and stand grimly by, like a prop for the photo op, as the hubby spills his guilty guts for the cameras?” Ms. Morrison asked.
“Silda Spitzer looked like she might have had a gun at her back, but there she was nonetheless, ‘at his side,’ as the saying goes.
“Stick with the marriage if that’s what you want, by all means — but let him twist in the wind alone. Just once, as the husband takes his place at the confessional microphone, I’d like to see a wronged wife walk onstage with him — and just keep on walking, suitcase in hand, exit stage right.”
Prune, Anyone?
To an old Prune like Ms. Morrison, marriage vows are no more sacred than watching the Letterman Show or peeling the label off your favorite tomato can.
Just guessing, but both of these old girls sound as if they rose from their beds of nails too late for a sponge bath. Their fellow girls should get a whiff of them when they report to their regular Tuesday-at-11 blubber classes down at Curves.
