Althouse: "Since Hillary never gave us 'closure' by braining the big boy with a frying pan, it was delicious to see another brainy lawyer ding him with a 32-page order and fine."

April 29, 2015

"Since Hillary never gave us 'closure' by braining the big boy with a frying pan, it was delicious to see another brainy lawyer ding him with a 32-page order and fine."

"The judge dryly mocked Mr. Clinton's tortured definition of his tryst. 'It appears,' she wrote, 'the President is asserting that Ms. Lewinsky could be having sex with him while, at the same time, he was not having sex with her.'"

I'm just reading an old Maureen Dowd column. Clinton v. Jones comes up today in the Conlaw1 readings, and I was looking for something.

Notice the old violent-females-are-funny meme, replete with a frying pan as the weapon. I wonder if younger people today even remember all the ancient humor involving wives hitting their husband with a frying pan.

45 comments:

Ann Althouse said...: ... or a rolling pin.; 4/29/15, 1:25 PM
clint said...: We remember how people laughed and laughed when Mrs. Tiger Woods went after him with a golf club...; 4/29/15, 1:25 PM
Beorn said...: I am pretty sure that your post is sexist...and probably racist.; 4/29/15, 1:25 PM
Brando said...: The double standard at work. Reverse the genders and you have a pretty disgusting comment by Ms. Dowd.

Granted, she was just using a turn of phrase, but this is what perpetuates spousal abuse culture.; 4/29/15, 1:32 PM
Meade said...: the bed's too big
the frying pan's too wide; 4/29/15, 1:32 PM
WisRich said...: If I recall correctly, she did throw a lamp or was it a vase. Does that count?; 4/29/15, 1:32 PM
mezzrow said...: This post makes me wonder if Eating Raoul is available on YouTube...; 4/29/15, 1:34 PM
Joe Shropshire said...: I'm a happy guy as the miles go by
There ain't too much that I'm missin'
But I've got wife with a fryin' pan
And when she talks, I listen.
I'm the king of the road, she's the queen of the house
And it may not be a palace
But it sure beats a load by the side of the road
I'm broke down south of Dallas

-- Junior Brown, Broke Down South of Dallas. As a singer and a songwriter, he's one helluva guitar player.; 4/29/15, 1:36 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Some years ago, in a book on Medieval English society, I read that one of the obligations of a certain group of peasants on the marriage of their lord was to give the bride a gift of a copper pan, large enough that she could sit herself in it "without undo compression."; 4/29/15, 1:40 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/29/15, 1:41 PM
Gahrie said...: Remember the clip from the Baltimore riot on Monday? The one with the Mom beating on her son as she takes him home from the riot? Now imagine it was a father doing that to his daughter.

The reaction would have been totally different, and the father would be in jail today.; 4/29/15, 1:51 PM
n.n said...: The frying pan in the kitchen was a segue to an automatic rifle in combat. Women who left the kitchen were conditioned for abortion and battlefield. As it turns out, a minority of the fairer sex are actually quite aggressive and violent. Hillary never served in the latter and privacy laws prevent disclosure of the former.; 4/29/15, 1:56 PM
lgv said...: I wonder when the last time she used a frying pan or a rolling pin. Before or after the last time she drove a car?; 4/29/15, 2:00 PM
Big Mike said...: Hillary Clinton wouldn't know what a frying pan was if it hit her on the head.

Er, am I allowed to say that?; 4/29/15, 2:22 PM
Michael The Magnificent said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/29/15, 2:23 PM
Michael The Magnificent said...: I wonder when the last time she used a frying pan or a rolling pin. Before or after the last time she drove a car?

Well, she's not home baking cookies and standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette.; 4/29/15, 2:27 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I wonder if younger people today even remember all the ancient humor involving wives hitting their husband with a frying pan.

Probably not, since that assumes that young women know their kitchen utensils, which means having a knowledge of cooking. I don't think that often the case nowadays.; 4/29/15, 2:41 PM
traditionalguy said...: Rolling pins and frying pans ( the cast iron ones?)are not serious weapons.

A butcher knife is a weapon.; 4/29/15, 2:50 PM
Brando said...: "Well, she's not home baking cookies and standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette."

That incident demonstrates how unpolished a politician she is. A slickster like Bill would have been baking up a storm and Tammy Wynetting all over the '92 campaign, knowing the feminist vote was already in the bag, and the "New Democrat" image was what would push them over the top. Hillary took a while to get that memo, and by the time she DID bake cookies for reporters it was far too transparent.

Of course, I would have respected the answer "hey, I don't bake cookies--I earn more than my husband and we live in the Governor's mansion. You think I can't get a cookie made for me? I sure as hell can!" A celebration of independence without sneering at those who stay home to bake cookies--win/win.; 4/29/15, 2:55 PM
Bob R said...: Traditionalguy - If I smack you up the side of the head with my 12" Lodge, you won't get up quick, and you'll be kind of greasy.; 4/29/15, 3:15 PM
Bob R said...: Pan was on the stove and the scale was on the counter, so I checked. Weighs in a 7.5#. (The hashtag means pounds for you youngsters.) Makes a baseball bat seem like a toy.; 4/29/15, 3:23 PM
DanTheMan said...: >> (The hashtag means pounds for you youngsters.)

And the bill of a cap goes in the front.; 4/29/15, 3:28 PM
robother said...: Uh oh, here comes the Old Battle-ax herself.
(A line from Life with Father?); 4/29/15, 3:33 PM
robother said...: Oops, more likely "Bringing up Father."; 4/29/15, 3:40 PM
Mel said...: If ever a husband deserved to be hit with a frying pan, Bill Clinton qualifies. I know it's not PC, but if Hillary didn't marry him to advance herself, she wouldn't have put up with the public embarrassment of multiple affairs...; 4/29/15, 4:32 PM
Mel said...: Traditional Guy, I could kill anyone with my Lodge cookware or my butcher knife. The cookware would make less of a mess. My smallest skillet is an 8 pound blunt instrument and so wouldn't leave a blood pool.
My mom threw one of her skillets at my drunk dad who was swinging his fists at one of my brothers for no good reason. She was known to swing her rolling pin at him for the same reason. I always understood that sometimes purposeful violence IS the answer to mindless violence.; 4/29/15, 4:42 PM
Big Mike said...: Well, she's not home baking cookies and standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette."

That incident demonstrates how unpolished a politician she is.

@Brando, even the least accomplished politician would never say that, because all it could do is cost you votes, and in fact would find a way to get a bunch of puff pieces done on how she manages to balance being one of the "One Hundred Most Powerful Lawyers in America" (per The National Law Journal) while being a supportive wife to her husband the Governor and mother and wonderful homemaker.

[sounds of retching]; 4/29/15, 5:07 PM
Leora said...: In a recent Tyler Perry movie elderly church lady Medea instructs a young woman in how to use a frying pan for this purpose. It was the one Maya Angelou appeared in.; 4/29/15, 5:45 PM
jr565 said...: Speaking of violent females I saw a thing on facebook that was a flash animation entitled "how to wake up someone you hate" or something to that effect.
And a woman is standing over a guy who's sleeping. She proceeds to slap him really hard in the face, then when he wakes shocked and bewildered she hugs him as if she's conforting him from waking from a bad dream.

I did laugh at it. But can you imagine if it was the guy standing over the woman and slapping her awake?; 4/29/15, 5:55 PM
Quaestor said...: It goes back a long time.; 4/29/15, 6:14 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Dog does not bite bitch. Althouse, will you miss that world when it's gone?; 4/29/15, 7:56 PM
sostander said...: My grandmothe told a story about helping her neighbor sew her abusive drunkard husband in the bedsheets after passing out and then beating him with the frying pan. Don't know if he stopped.; 4/29/15, 8:07 PM
rhhardin said...: Frying pans and rolling pins are nagging.; 4/29/15, 8:42 PM
bridgecross said...: If my wife ever went after me with our old cast iron pan, it would stave my head in.; 4/29/15, 9:04 PM
rhhardin said...: I've noticed, in a fair number of romantic comedies, that the couple has gotten over their repulsion and gotten together, and then I check the DVD player and the film is only half over.

This always means they break up soon, and it varies whether they get back together. The latter gives the French movie effect.; 4/29/15, 9:09 PM
Jake said...: "I wonder if younger people today even remember all the ancient humor involving wives hitting their husband with a frying pan."

Yes. Rapunzel uses the frying pan as her weapon of choice in Disney's (relatively) recent "Tangled."; 4/29/15, 9:16 PM
From Inwood said...: "The conversations with the flying plates..."

Larry Hart; 4/29/15, 11:13 PM
Carl said...: Of course. Remember the Baltimore video of the mother smacking her son around the head? That was Mother of the Year material, you betcha.

Now imagine a video of a father smacking his daughter around the head, so she cowers in the just the same way. (And we can even assume it's to prevent the daughter from running wild in the streets.)

Whoa! Child abuse! Assault and battery! Lock that son of a bitch right up.; 4/29/15, 11:28 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: I'll give you some not so ancient humor Ms. Althouse.

The funniest line I ever heard Dennis Miller utter came after someone played a clip of Hillary "screeching" in one of her 2008 campaign experiences.

Miller's comment: "She sounds like my first ex wife."

Sexist? You betcha. Funny? Hell yes!; 4/30/15, 12:29 AM
AllenS said...: Great. Now frying pans and rolling pins are trigger words.; 4/30/15, 7:37 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Rolling pins and frying pans ( the cast iron ones?)are not serious weapons."

There's also the frozen leg of lamb. Remember that one?

Unserious... but not undeadly.; 4/30/15, 7:38 AM
Fred Drinkwater said...: Leg of Lamb? Hmm, for some reason that doesn't sound right, so [ google frozen leg of lamb murder short story ] and of course it comes up with Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter".
Indeed it was a leg of lamb in the story, but there's a note that he got the idea from someone who suggested leg of MUTTON as a weapon.
I suppose Dahl used Lamb instead, because he visualized the husband in the story as a small man. Mutton would be necessary for a big man.
The life of an author must be just FILLED with these subtle considerations.; 4/30/15, 9:48 AM
BurntOrnge said...: "The double standard at work. Reverse the genders and you have a pretty disgusting comment by Ms. Dowd."

But wouldn't life be a little better if we would all chill out and be OK with this particular double standard?; 4/30/15, 9:51 AM
Wilbur said...: Love the Maggie and Jiggs references.

IIRC, Mama in The Katzenjammer Kids used to enforce order on the Captain and the Inspector with a rolling pin.; 4/30/15, 10:28 AM
mikee said...: That Hillary did not drop Bill like the scum he is, with or without a frying pan attack, but instead went on national television and accused half the populace of being part of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, in an attempt to shield her adulterous spouse from the consequences of his multiple affairs (and believable rape accusations) tells you all you need to know about her.

She is a vile, loathsome arrogance of a power-hungry politician.; 5/1/15, 10:17 AM