Some people think Maureen Dowd needs to be muzzled, a la Hannibal Lecter (see Left). I mirror Lecter’s words when he once said: “I myself do not.” She manages to step on her throat, seemingly unprodded, with sufficient pressure — and no additional assistance necessary — just like the Dems and the DEM themselves.

From the current March 17th issue of The Week:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked an Australian newspaper last week to help her find romance. Dowd was in Australia to promote her feminist manifesto, Are Men Necessary?, when she confessed that she always had a thing for Australian guys. “If they can take a strong, sassy woman, Australian men should please apply,” she told the Sydney Australian. The paper got dozens of replies.

“If she can answer this question, I’ll let her have me,” wrote one man. “How many blokes does it take to open a beer can? None. Maureen should have had it opened when she brought it to me.”

‘Nuff said, mate.

IN THAT SAME ISSUE, AND IN A SIMILAR VEIN:

Charlotte Allen wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times: “Betty Friedan, it seems, died just in time to roll over in her grave.” Why is that, you might wonder? It would seem that a new University of Virginia study has disproved feminism’s principal tenet — that traditional marriage leaves women unfulfilled and miserable.

In a survey of more than 5,000 couples, sociologists found that 52% of “stay-at-home” wives rates themselves as “very happy.” That was contrasted with 41% of working wives who likewise described themselves as “very happy.”

The survey also managed to challenge the so-called “utopian” notion that housework and child care should be split evenly. The survey, in a clear non-PC fashion, revealed that women are happiest when their husbands are committed to the marriage, appreciative of their wives’ contributions, and emotionally open. “It doesn’t much matter whether they dust and do the dishes,” The Week noted.

John Tierney of The New York Times responded by writing that “the happiest wives, regardless of the family’s overall income, were the ones whose husbands brought in at least 2/3rds of the money.” Even feminists who said they believed in “a partnership of equals” were far happier with men who provided most of the family’s income.

Further, Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News observed: Women may be hard-wired to prefer men who are good providers, but the findings clearly indicate women are happiest with “a loving partner” who is “romantic, affectionate, and understanding.”

“In the end,” she says, “the answer to the age-old question of what women want is no surprise. It’s simply love.”

BUT WAIT: THE FEMINISTS WEIGH IN

Meghan O’Rourke from Slate.com said that women still aren’t sure what they want. She writes that “the more you scrutinize a relationship, the more likely you are to find fault with it. That’s why,” she continues, “feminists are less likely to be happy than traditional, religious women. The latter, on the other hand, are free to think (italics are from the article itself — BZ) of themselves as traditionalists, even though many of them work outside the home (strictly for finanacial reasons, of course), and expect their husbands to share in the housework and the child-rearing.”

Traditional women, in other words, are generally happier because “they’re free riders on the women’s movement (though they’d deny it), whereas feminists have descended into a tangle of second guesses.”

Or, I might add, if you’re a so-called “traditionalist” (read: a woman possessing any hint of a religious embrace): you’re simply too stupid to know what you are missing.