Gushing for the weeper

Thrust Into Limelight and for Some a Symbol of Washington's Bite

(Emphasis added.)

Republicans held her up as a victim of Democrats' browbeating, while Democrats, backpedaling, insisted it was a Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who caused Mrs. Alito's upset.

From this very same article:

On Wednesday, one of those Republicans, Mr. Graham, tried to mock the Democrats with a question about the alumni group, which opposed affirmative action.

"Are you really a closet bigot?" Mr. Graham asked, at which point Mrs. Alito drew her hands to her face and left the hearing room weeping.

Back to the tut-tutting:

One fact was not in dispute: Mrs. Alito has generated sympathy for her husband in the hearing room and, perhaps, beyond Washington among Americans who had otherwise tuned out.

Interesting use of the word "fact." And, no mention of people who thought the sympathy and the outburst were bogus.

On to the fawning:

In some ways, Mrs. Alito is a classic suburban mother, working part-time as a substitute teacher when she is not shuttling her teenage daughter, a champion swimmer, to practices and meets. Friends say she has devoted the last 20 years to raising her children and supporting her husband and his career.

She is, they say, an extremely intelligent and well-read woman who orders restaurant meals in fluent French and recently took a philosophy class for intellectual stimulation.

"She's like a renaissance person," Susan Engelman Volkert, an employment lawyer who, along with her husband, Judge Donald J. Volkert Jr. of Superior Court in Essex County, N.J., has been friends with the Alitos for two decades. "She knows a little about music, a little about art. She's very active in sports and has been active in the community.

"And the role that she plays in life is that she has stayed home and raised two beautiful children, and of course been there for him."

A renaissance person AND a conservative idol housemommy. A rare breed, for sure.

She has sat behind him all week, a pleasant-looking woman in sensible clothes, peering through rimless glasses as Democrats grilled Judge Alito about his investments and his affiliation with a conservative Princeton alumni group and Republicans tried to provide him some relief.

I surprised that this paragraph doesn't read "as those nasty, mean Democrats grilled Judge Alito..."