Linda Hirshman, writing in the WaPo:

Everybody started hating Linda, apparently, when I published an article in the progressive magazine the American Prospect last December, saying that women who quit their jobs to stay home with their children were making a mistake. Worse, I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings...

Oh, poor, poor Linda. How my heart doth weep for her.

Actually, I'm not writing simply because she's so massively clueless that it didn't occur to her that denigrating a significant portion of American women might earn her some flack.

I'm actually writing because she's also apparently pathologically dishonest:

Although I was aware of the stories about women quitting, I did not know what a minefield the subject was. Specifically, I did not know that you can say almost anything about how great it is for a woman to give up her job; standing up for staying at work is the big taboo.

And again:

I think what caused the ruckus is that someone came out full blast for women who work.

Why is it that we share the planet with a certain class of human being who apparently cannot honestly engage in debate: they spend more time trying to dissemble about the topic than addressing it.

The problem is (forgive me, Strunk & White) obviously not that she "came out for women who work." The issue is not that she was defending the idea that women who work might be making an acceptable choice. Instead, she wrote an article attacking women who had any other ideas.

I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives....

She's a philosopher? Great Gatsby: then why can't she understand the difference between defense and offense?

Look, I may like red shirts. I may defend other people who wear red shirts. But it doesn't then necessarily follow that every other person who chooses, say, a blue shirt, is, to use Linda's words, "making a mistake".

Why can't she simply be honest and admit that she denigrated and insulted any woman who took time off work for her kids? Why does she have to play this pathetic mind game -- incidentally, a total disgrace for a woman who wants us to believe she is a philosopher -- of setting up a straw man to fight?

And what on earth is the Washington Post doing giving space to a woman who has so little understanding about human nature -- never mind that she's also busy, in her own words, "tell[ing] others how to live" -- that she simply has no idea that insulting all moms who have ever taken time off work for their kids might earn her some ire?

This is a "feminist" role model? A spineless, simpering woman who writes "woe is me" when people criticize her just as she has criticized so many others? And who cannot even fairly characterize, must less answer, the argument against her? And who instructs others on how to live, while admittedly not even having a good enough understanding of human nature to understand the impact her words will have?