it makes sense. But I guess the joke is, what Waters' book really stands for is that no, the family is not exclusively a conservative province.

At another level as well, a large sector of conservatism is the machismo and denial of that which is NOT macho - witness the obsession the right has with defense, gun rights, "getting tough" on crime and terrorists, the attempt to make liberalism somehow not the proper province for the self respecting male - equating it with gayness and "girls". So maybe it might not have been the best for the writer's "conservative cred" to write an article trying to bring Alice Waters, a cook and a girl, into the fold.

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Did I err?