The Fury

familiar word / vague understanding of the meaning

Definition of Furies:
Greek & Roman Mythology. "The three terrible winged goddesses with serpentine hair, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, who pursue and punish doers of unavenged crimes." (answers.com)

Where I ran across it:
11/05/07 - NYT online editorial "Gift of Gall" by Maureen Dowd published Nov 4, 2007.

“…When pundettes tut-tut that playing the victim is not what a feminist should do; they forget that Hillary is not a feminist. If she were merely some clichéd version of a women’s rights advocate, she never could have so effortlessly blown off Marian Wright Edelman and Lani Guinier when Bill first got in, or played the Fury with Bill’s cupcakes during the campaign…”

My two cents:
It's a lusty, tongue-in-cheek article Dowd writes following Hillary Clinton’s showing in the latest presidential debate. I gotta hand it to her - Dowd, not Hillary (let's not go there, OK?). Dowd deftly injects a mythological reference that is such a quick and clever zing in the midst of so many I could easily have missed it. It stopped me because 1) I was simply fascinated by her craftiness and 2) I realized I was quite frankly rusty on The Furies and needed to refresh.

Nota Bene: "Once a Clinton crony, in 1997, Marian Wright Edelman criticized President Clinton for his welfare reform package by warning it could lead to record numbers of uninsured children, increased child abuse, and rising firearms deaths. Lani Guinier's moment in the history of American government was guaranteed when President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Justice Department's top civil rights post in 1993--and then later withdrew her nomination, bowing to a hailstorm of controversy." (answers.com)