Of sows’ purses and silken eras

This is what passes for news these days in the mainstream media:

“Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton dished with the girls today on Capitol Hill, talking about haircuts, musing on her husband’s whereabouts and revealing the contents of her purse.”

Yes, here’s the venerated (or is that venereal?) New York Times speaking (or is that spewing?) ever so authoritatively, as America’s self-proclaimed paper of record covers a “jolly” Washington, D.C., press conference. At least reporter Katharine Q Seelye uses muscular verbs in her piece, headlined “Mrs. Clinton Gives Girls a Peek Inside Her Purse.”

Sunglasses, reading glasses. Brush and comb. Vitamins. Lipstick. Powder. Notebook. Cell phone.

“Gag me! Such exciting news for the feeble minded!” commented Pam Ladds, the Philadelphia healing activist/therapist.

So what if it was the ninth annual Take Our Daughters to Work? Day, April 26, a registered trademark of the Ms. Foundation for Women? That’s no excuse. And besides, must we? When I began reading the story, for the briefest of instants I thought in my feverish haze I had mistakenly wandered onto the set of the old “Art Linkletter’s House Party,” where the eponymous host would embarrass women audience-members by dumping out their purses on national TV and itemizing the clutter.

Betrayal!

And yet, I posit it was that precise pathological voyeurism, that very sensibility, which doubtlessly spawned reality TV.

“What if we went on ‘Art Linkletter’s House Party’ now?” Barbara Kingsolver writes in her 1999 novel, “The Poisonwood Bible.” “In spite of myself, I laughed. Mr. Linkletter likes to surprise ladies by taking their purses and pulling out what all’s inside for the television audience. They think it’s very comical if he digs out a can opener or a picture of Herbert Hoover. Imagine if he shook us, and out fell pinking shears and a hatchet. The thought of it gave me nerves. …”

Sunglasses, reading glasses. Brush and comb. Vitamins. Lipstick. Powder. Notebook. Cell phone.

I suppose Sigmund Freud, that old proto-semiotician of the psyche, would have called purses a female sex-symbol — in fact he must have done exactly that in his mesmerizing tome, “The Interpretation of Dreams” — and so this seemingly innocent plundering by Art Linkletter was really a symbolic kind of rape, a televised transgression, a defilement reflective of the low status of women back in the passive, and passive-aggressive, 1950s.

Anyone who’s ever had their purse snatched, or the converse, knows it’s a deeply disturbing violation. A pair of coked-up miscreants nearly beat me to death a decade ago for my little woven Guatemalan purse containing the grand sum of $5.49, but no, it wasn’t anyone I owed money to.

And, if you dream of misplacing your purse, or wallet, you clearly are unsettled about something relating to your central sense of self, your personal identity.

Sunglasses, reading glasses. Brush and comb. Vitamins. Lipstick. Powder. Notebook. Cell phone.

Moreover, what is the detritus engine that keeps sputtering along and spewing out all this Clinton claptrap? Don’t go away mad, Billary, just go away. Won’t they ever leave?

Probably not. A monster movie, with infinite sequels.

I’m waiting for Hillary of New York to pose for Playboy wearing one of those new gun-holster bras with Adolf, er, Rudolf Giuliani’s boot on her butt as a promo for “The Weakest Link” or perhaps even “Boot Camp,” bringing sadomasochistic insults into America’s living rooms as just another entertainment commodity.

Sunglasses, reading glasses. Brush and comb. Vitamins. Lipstick. Powder. Notebook. Cell phone.

“Sickkkkkkkkkk! Have you watched any of those shows?” therapist Pam Ladds adds. “I was forced into watching two episodes of ‘Boot Camp’ because one of the recruits works in [my significant other’s] office. Fortunately she got booted on the second show so we didn’t have to see it again.”

Perhaps the most poignant Take Our Daughters to Work? story has not been presented in its proper Mothers Day perspective.

Veronica Bowers took her daughter to work, but it did not end up as a White House success story. No, it did not end well at all. When an innocent American missionary plane was downed last month by Peruvian air force pilots mistaking it for a drug smuggling flight, missionary Veronica “Roni” Bowers, 35, and her adopted 7-month-old daughter, Charity, seated in her lap, were killed by a single bullet as a jet fired on the doomed Cessna, while Bowers’ husband, Jim, 38, and their 6-year-old son, Cory, survived. These deaths were a heartbreaking symbol of a drug war run amok.

Little Charity Bowers had been adopted by the couple at the age of 1 month.

Not nearly enough has been written about Roni Bowers — “called” to be a missionary when she was 12 — senselessly killed while living her faith and putting her beliefs into action. She was buried in Pensacola, Fla., near the home of her parents, after an earlier funeral service attended by 1,300 at a Baptist church in Michigan.

Before her death, Roni Bowers lived on a houseboat in Peru — yes, a houseboat! — with her husband and two children, and she was writing a book about her missionary work there. Traveling a 200-mile stretch of the Amazon River since being assigned to Peru in 1993, the Bowerses ministered along the banks, preaching to villagers, teaching the Gospel, and reading Bible stories to little children.

My heart goes out to her family.

Though Jim Bowers witnessed a bullet passing through his wife’s heart and into Charity’s head, “at the funeral for his wife and infant daughter,” the Associated Press wrote, the “American missionary said he has forgiven the Peruvian pilot who shot down their small plane and said his wife would have done the same.”

Whatever your politics, these are extraordinary people.

Sunglasses, reading glasses. Brush and comb. Vitamins. Lipstick. Powder. Notebook. Cell phone.