Categorical Aperitif

I am increasingly convinced that Maureen Dowd is not a human but a relatively unsophisticated artificial intelligence (if you'll forgive the use of the word intelligence in this context). I say "unsophisticated" because she manages to work two references to Hillary Clinton into a column that's otherwise about—well, psycho-economic studies of dating behavior or "men be different from women" or something—but neither reference makes a lick of sense, either in context or out of it. Here's my impression of how she gets to the first one (emphasis mine):

blah blah dating blah blah study blah blah men like this blah blah but women like that blah blah

Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves.

????? Eeewwwwww. I'm scared of bees. Wouldn't much like being a slave, either. Damn that Hillary!

Go ahead. Read Dowd's piece and see if you find yourself saying anything substantially different from "WTF?" when you get to that line. I dare ya.

Here's my impression of how she gets to the second:

blah blah smarts blah blah plump hips blah blah angry men earn clout in office blah blah angry women lose clout in office blah blah

That may be why Obama is trying to get “fired up,” in the words of his fall slogan, while Hillary calmly observes that she can take the heat and stereotypically adds that she likes the kitchen.

And there it ends. OK, there's sort of a logical transition into this one; there's a semi-sequitur here. But still, you'd be forgiven for wondering whether there's a quota built into Dowd's programming and she has to work at least two belittling references to Hillary Clinton into each column or her processor will lock up or something.

Anybody who reads this blog (all three of you) knows that I'm fond of captioning random photos. Much of the joy of captioning is in imagining possible contexts for the photo: using words to momentarily conjure up a state of affairs in which the photo would "make sense" in some way not entirely at one with—but not entirely alien to, either—the world of our familiar experience. Sometimes I find this relatively easy, sometimes relatively hard, but I usually enjoy the challenge. As I look at this MoDo column, though, I find myself baffled by that first non sequitur in particular. I am struggling to imagine a context in which the sentence—

Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves.

—would make sense. And now I know I'm going to be plagued by this. It's going to linger in the back of my mind and intrude itself upon me while I'm trying to concentrate on other things and otherwise make my life miserable. Is there a context in which this otherwise crazy MoDo utterance would make perfect sense? If so, what is it? We must find it! I'm stumped, but if anyone has suggestions, put 'em in comments or send 'em care of Make Sense for MoDo to nashtbrutusandshort@earthlink.net.

Won't someone please think of the context?