Almost exactly three years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from a book that remains its most commented article of all time. Under the fiery title, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," Yale law professor Amy Chua set out a manifesto for motherhood in proudly recounting her ironfisted reign over her two young daughters, which included the prohibition of sleepovers and the insistence that they attain no grade lower than an A.

The 8,821 comments that followed are a snapshot of the kind of vilification leveled at Chua. Readers were outraged by her dogmatism and superiority, furious about what they saw as cultural stereotyping and appalled by the kind of parenting that many commentators deemed "child abuse."

The noise got even louder when she published "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" later that year. In it, Chua depicts herself as so cartoonishly cruel that she seems more evil Disney queen than real 21st-century mother. Of all the many indelible details that had readers shrieking, the birthday card incident is the most infamous. This is the time that her 4-year-old daughter offered her a handmade card with a smiley face on it and promptly had it thrown back in her face. Chua's words: "I deserve better than this. So I reject this."