Look at the Stars, Look How They Shine for Luke

It almost plays out like a formulaic episode of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond: The comic, boys-will-be-boys naif Ray is supposed to stay at home and wait for the washer repairman, but reschedules the appointment for another day and deceptively slips out for a round of golf.

When his wife Debra comes home and catches him sneaking in the back door with his golf clubs, she's furious. But hey -- Debra is a mean, domineering housewife with feminist tendencies, so what's the harm? Can we blame him?

Lest we forget the show's premise: everybody loves Raymond!

Except we're not talking about a sitcom, we're talking about the mayor of a big city doing a Dick Cheney on what many have characterized as a "group of angry women," his excuse (more like an answer from his automated-response cribs) being, "mayors almost never attend such City Council functions."

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When the issue of promoting three City police officers with histories of domestic violence first began to boil around June 27, after the mayor broke his week-long silence on the matter, FOP union President James Malloy was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, saying the mayor is "getting pressure, probably from women's groups, and now he wants to crawfish and go back the other way. That's a sign of immaturity."

That statement stuck in my crawfish.

Attempting to right a wrong is not a sign of immaturity. Not admitting you made a bad in the first place is.

But back to Malloy: I don't like the way that loaded statement read (remember, I'm an angry woman). "Probably from women's groups." As though "women's groups" were all the same, just a bunch of crazy, hormonal ladies squawking about general injustice again. If he meant something else, I think a lot of us angry women would like to know exactly what.

Angry men have been lauded for centuries. In fact, just yesterday, we celebrated as victories the outcomes of the bold actions of some of the angriest men in history.

Angry women, it seems, while eventually reconciled as pioneering women, just aren't taken to as kindly. Angry takes on a different connotation when it's applied to women. It's a dirty fact, and it's unspoken, but it's not a secret.

While I can see the mighty wall of red tape the mayor is up against in having to deal with a police union, I can never condone not doing something because it's not "usually done." And I can never condone going golfing when there's work to be done.

Meantime, I hope Luke has some good elbow cream. They've got to be awfully rough after rubbing against so much Hollywood.