Our elementary school-age daughter was crying after school today because some classmates teased her for crying what she called “tears of joy” when a lost dog was reunited with his human family during a movie in class.

Up until then I hadn’t thought much about Speaker-elect John Boehner crying on 60 Minutes, but in casting about for something new to tell her to cheer her up — this teasing thing not being a novelty — I recalled all the Fourth Estate types who have been criticizing our future Speaker of the House for crying in public.

So I told our daughter who John Boehner is, and how he’s about to become the most important man in Congress, and how he’s third in line to be President, and how he cried just last weekend in television just because he was thinking about making sure kids in school have “a shot at the American dream.” I asked her if she thought it was a good thing for the most important man in Congress to care so much about little kids that he cried about it in public, even if people teased him, and because she thought it was a good thing, and saw the parallels to what she herself had done, this story cheered her up right away.

So thank you for crying, John Boehner.