Elizabeth Bitch!

Rover, come here. Rover, come here, you son of a bitch.

Next one, please. He's broken my pattern, that son of a bitch.

Of course, female dogs, bitches, on the other hand, have several bitch amendments to male hierarchical rule.

But lately an even more troubling sentiment seems to have emerged, with Western leaders willing to settle not for our son of a bitch, but for just about any son of a bitch who can impose stability, whatever the cost. It is an alluring but dangerous mindset.

And what you will find is a very, very low ranking bitch will quite easily keep a bone away from a high ranking male.

And I've developed a very wonderful relationship with this creature by this point, and I've realized that this is a mean son of a bitch.

MADRID US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when asked about American support for the notorious Nicaraguan despot Anastasio Somoza, purportedly replied, He may be a son of a bitch, but he s our son of a bitch. Whether or not the quip is apocryphal, it sums up a longstanding Western approach to much of the world and one that underpinned US foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

It's as if there's some schadenfreude there, that we actually take delight in people getting things wrong, so that we can then moan and groan and bitch at them.

This is all the more peculiar given that the victorious parties that emerged out of Solidarity are keen to promote its values, particularly solidarity with a small s. But their purpose is purely instrumental, for to call somebody a liberal nowadays in Poland is more pejorative than calling him a son of a bitch.