The Feminine Mystique

When ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams's friends and family gathered in his sister Ronnie's Central Park South duplex on Monday night to celebrate his first book, his father, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, took up the traditional paternal duty of divulging an embarrassing childhood anecdote.

Apparently, when Abrams fils was in ninth grade, a female French teacher had derided him in front of the class.

"On his way back to his desk he was heard to have said, 'Bitch!'" Mr. Abrams senior remembered, an utterance that earned Dan a suspension. Floyd later overheard one-half of his son's phone conversation with the teacher, which suggested he had inherited his father's knack for defending free expression.

"Yes, yes I did say that word," Floyd remembered Dan say, "but I was referring to a 'bitch of a situation.'"

Two decades later, Mr. Abrams junior has used his lawyerly reasoning to make it up to the fairer sex. His book, Man Down, marshals an array scientific studies to make the case that women are superior to men in just about every way.

We'll send a copy over to Riverdale Country School.

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel