Friends of Elena Kagan grudgingly admitted on Wednesday that the Supreme Court nominee was unmarried not because of her orientation but because American men are absolutely terrible in bed.

"Maybe we shouldn't have said anything," said an embarrassed law-school classmate of the 50-year-old Solicitor General. "We didn't want for the men Elena's dated to feel inadequate simply because they are."

Experts disagreed whether or not the approximately 700,000 available adult men whom Kagan has met since she began college constituted a representative sample, but all agreed that Kagan has faced what one called "a perfect storm" of erotic ineptitude, a confluence of clumsy bedroom technique, poor stamina, and general inattention to female pleasure.

Baffled male observers struggled to understand how Kagan could remain straight and single, despite having known such eligible bachelors as Eliot Spitzer and Larry Summers during their unmarried years."Elena makes her own money, has plenty of friends, and doesn't need her self-esteem shored up," one confidante remarked. "If a man who wants to date her doesn't make it worth her while in the bedroom, she's better off with housecats." Pressed specifically about Spitzer, Kagan's confidante remarked that "Eliot's an old friend of hers, but sleeping with him is really not for amateurs." Kagan's confidante has requested anonymity in order to admit things everyone already knows.

As of Wednesday, however, a stubborn and entirely male minority refused to believe that a successful 50-year-old woman who had never been married could actually be straight.

"Technically, a woman like Elena might be single if she were a lesbian in Cambridge, Massachusetts," allowed one local authority. "But not for long, honey."