In which The Gay Recluse offers a summary and score for selected opinion columns in The Times.

Gail Collins/Hillary’s Free Pass

The Short Version: Hillary’s tears touched the exhausted and overworked woman in all of us.

In her words: “Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who’s overdosed on multitasking. They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go back to school/start a business/become a lawyer.”

Score: B+
Collins writes compellingly about the emotional factors that — unfortunately — seem to drive elections at all levels; she also explores the odd relationship Hillary — who seems so much more at ease being a boring policy wonk — has with her own emotional displays (although it clearly paid off in NH). There’s nothing revelatory here, but it’s a good warm-up before we dive into the trenches of daily warfare in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

Roger Cohen/Is Ethanol for Everybody?

The Short Version: For those who harvest sugar cane, ethanol production is not the party we all like to think it is.

In his words: “A new fuel should not carry oil’s frequent curse: the enrichment of a narrow elite.”

Score: C-
Although we completely agree with Cohen’s point about the misery of manual labor, we question Cohen’s mantra that “global trade will cure every ill if we could just do it right!” (just to be clear: our paraphrase, not his words.) History — and in particular, the history of the United States — shows that the enrichment of some via global trade always comes at great cost to others, and this should be the starting point of any discussion of Brazil’s problems. This is the source of a lurking and very unsatisfying dissonance in Cohen’s analysis, as if he too is afraid to hold up the mirror and describe what he sees.

Andrew Cohut/Getting It Wrong (Guest Column)

The Short Version: White-trash racists don’t participate in surveys, but they do vote.

In his words: “But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.”

Score: A-
With the caveat that we hate surveys and opinion polls of all kinds, this is nevertheless a completely logical explanation of the discrepancy between the polls and the results in NH. As we all know, irrational hatred lurks in the hearts of many who should know better (and even know they should know better when it comes to racism), and we’re happy to see a columnist who does not pretend otherwise.