Perhaps Reed is joking and I'm being too literal. But then Reed's colleague at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, praised Reed for picking up on Roberts' apparent "contempt for all things female."
As further evidence, she points to Roberts' now-familiar remark in a 1985 memo about whether a (female) government lawyer could be nominated for an award that recognizes women who change professions after age 30. Roberts approved the nomination, but added a comment:
"Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide." Ba-da-boom!
It's a lawyer joke, of course, which ranks in popularity with "dumb blonde" jokes. As in, "Do we really need any more lawyers?" Not, "Is it really in the public interest to let women out of the kitchen?"
I don't know any lawyers who can't take a crack about the profession everyone loves to hate, except perhaps lawyers who aren't very good. The insecurity that leads to disproportionate outrage is often justified. Nor do I know any blondes who get their tresses in a tangle over dumb blonde jokes. As the platinum-haired Dolly Parton once quipped: "I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know that I'm not dumb. I also know that I'm not blonde."
Lithwick grudgingly acknowledges "the joke," but doesn't find the "humorless-feminist tack" a worthy defense of what to her is clearly a good-ol'-boy attitude toward gender equity. Lithwick concludes:
"The problem isn't with his desperate housewives (or hideous lawyers) crack, but with his relentless 'Gidget sucks' tone. Roberts honestly seemed to think that humor or disdain were the only appropriate ways to think about gender. It's not that feminists can't take a joke. It's that Roberts can't seem to take feminists seriously."
To which the sane, if smart-alecky, respond: Is it any wonder?