[Redacted] is an idjit

I've been trying to get out of the house more during the week. This a real problem, because even when I decide, say, that I'm going to go catch a movie after work, a little voice starts piping up in the late afternoon: Hey! You know what'd be realllly good about now? That pre-made preservative-laden Punjabi eggplant stuff. And you know what? You could change into fleece leggings and eat it while watching Colbert on Hulu.com, and we wouldn't have to spend 45 minutes each way taking the metro out to Silver Spring just to watch something that's going to come out on Netflix eventually anyway....

And the thing is, it does always sound good. (I think they put something addictive in those boil-a-bags.) But even though I can't rationally find anything wrong with my desire to be a hermit, I suspect that going out is one of those things, like exercise, that ought to be done now and then, and so tonight I forced myself over to the DCJCC, even though it meant ignoring the obviously inauspicious signs that the first bus sailed merrily past without pausing to pick me up, and the second, which I chased down after walking halfway to my destination, took off again just as I reached it.

The worst thing is that I somehow thought I was going to hear Ellen Goodman. I mean, my reading the ad in my inbox was kind of a quick "yaddayaddayaddaHillary ClintonyaddayaddayaddaSarahPalin...ok, I'm in," plus I tend to mix up names that few other people would (in this case, the preponderance of "n" sounds in both names did it, I think).

I'd never heard of Sally Quinn before. I was prepared to be open-minded -- hey, she's here to talk about interesting stuff! -- but then I read a couple of the clips she'd put out, and noticed right away: (1) they appeared to be written by a particularly dull fourth-grader, and (2) clip number one talked about the impossibility of Palin being a good politician while distracted by her children. Clip number two assumed that Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly be ambitious, and argued that the poor dear should drop out of public life for a while to figure out what she really wanted.

While I was still collecting my jaw from the floor, Ms. Quinn began to speak -- or, at least, sound came out; the botox rather prevented her mouth from actually moving -- and began to expound on her feminist credentials, which seemed to consist of having gone to Smith and known Friedan and Steinem.

I started to scribble notes (starting with, in response to the above, "And if I'd known John Glenn...?"). As she unpacked her dreary little women-are-equal-but-different postulations, and meandered through some pointless ramblings which established her belief that what was true for her was true for all women, I started to scribble faster, intending to jump in as soon as the discussion was opened up -- Biology is destiny, much? Empirical evidence...but, as she pressed on with such extraordinary things such as the nonironic utterance of "postfeminist," I stopped writing. Then there was this gem, in discussing why she was chosen as a news anchor: "There were other women more qualified. There were men more qualified. But they chose me. Why? Because they wanted a woman." And I started thinking: does that even make sense to you, hon? Do you honestly hide from yourself the thought that you got it because you were pretty?

She'd also been hired by the Post to cover the party pages because she was pretty, and it led her to believe she was a journalist. And then she thought that, since she had genitals, she could write about women.

I stopped taking notes as her incoherence gathered steam, and fixated more on the question of why she thought she had a claim to speak in public. And then I realized: because people listen. And then I got up and left.

I'm a bit bummed...in part, because while it'd be lovely to think that the anachronism of this woman is jarring precisely because there are so few of her around anymore, Palin -- "every woman's role model," according to McCain last night -- is a highly salient counterexample. Mostly, though, because this is just going to make it that much harder to resist the 4 PM siren call of the microwaveable dal.