Clearly, my wife the economist doesn't understand the concept of "opportunity cost." I kid, I kid...

Thanks for the kind words Peter and Basil.  As for this:

I kind of wish I'd thought of that line myself.

Ah! Let me field this one. I think you're always perturbed by this as a husband, but fortunately, Mollie's not exactly a stranger to controversial public debates. She's at least psychologically prepared for this kind of thing. Which is not to say either of us enjoy it.

However, I'm proud that she's fierce about what she believes and that she's able to turn around such vile comments, make them instructive, and eventually channel the debate in a more positive direction. 

It's worth remembering that people who say these things are often lashing out because of some deep personal issues. There's not much you can do about that except refuse to be dragged down by their problems, or express some degree of compassion if you have to engage with them.

And if, God forbid, this ever did spill over into real life, I'm reasonably quick-witted and 6'5", so I'm confident attacks on my wife could be handled.

Loved this bit:

Mr. Romney mostly spent reading USA Today and using an iPad while wearing headphones — she told him her idea for improving the American health care system: slashing overhead costs by switching to an electronic billing system.
“He looked at me blankly and said, ‘I understand,’ then put his iPad headphones in and kept reading,” she said.

Electronic billing system! Brilliant! We've been trying to fix the American health care system, and this woman has lightning in a bottle. If only the next president of the U.S. would listen...

Methinks Ms. McClanahan needs to get over herself.

What? Who hates the Great Gatsby? What my better half said about "you don't read him for the plot but for those achingly beautiful paragraphs interspersed throughout the work" is true, for much of his post-Gatsby novels. (Tender is the Night is a slog and a half, but there's sentence or description that's just dazzling on about every other page.) Gatsby, on the other hand is pretty much note perfect back to front, where the rest of his work can easily be divided into too-bad-he-was-drunk-all-the-time-when-he-wrote-this or overtly commercial. I happen think Gatsby works on just about every level. (Of course, I don't quite grasp all the hatred for post-modernists here, either. Pynchon, Barth and Delillo all have their moments, even though I cede that much of their work is needlessly impenetrable.)

When you consider what kids are actually being forced to read these days I think you'd be comparably grateful for a lot of these authors dissed above. I mean, I must have had at least a dozen syllabi with Toni Morrison on it, and that's a fate worse than death.

But Rudolph Hess is alive in Scotland!

There's also the not insignificant matter of O'Donnell's character -- or the lack thereof. When she visited the Examiner offices, I found her less than truthful and somewhat delusional. Her later revelations to John McCormack of The Weekly Standard suggested her problems were even worse than I already thought.

I have low expectations for primary candidates, but basic honesty and decency is something I would insist on. I'm afraid O'Donnell doesn't clear that low bar.