The "Risk" Of Martha Alito?

Joan Venocchi, writing in The Boston Globe, drops a remarkably clueless and snide comment into a peevish piece that generally denounces the questions poorly posed and windy questions from the Democrats and the "sickening sycophancy" of the Republicans:

The risk of wife-as-prop was demonstrated yesterday. Mrs. Alito broke down in tears and left the hearing when the going got rough.

Hm. Apparently, in Ms. Venocchi's world, a wife would attend her husband's hearings to sit on the Supreme Court only as a "prop." Couldn't she be engaged, interested, even vested in the outcome? How demeaning to assume otherwise. How . . . how . . anti-feminist. And what is the problem women like Ms. Venocchi apparently have with being, as she characterizes it earlier, "a loyal wife"?

And it seems to me that if there is any "risk" that Mrs. Alito's abrupt departure poses, it's exclusive to the Democrats -- as it underscored the mean-spirited, bullying tactics that have been their only consistent strategy over the past three days.