We are not amused.

I agree with Deborah Howell. "Tongue in cheek" and self-deprecating opinion pieces do not come with a moral attached (in the case of Charlotte Allen's piece, that women really are stupid after all, and should stay out of politics, being content, I guess, to gaze at pinups of their favorite politicians from the safety of their kitchens.) Maybe I (and all those Post readers who flooded the editors' inbox) are just sensitive right now (Sensitive! Yes! We're women :-P) but if this is a "tongue in cheek" humor piece, it's lacking a punchline.
Allen's premise seems to be that, since some women get a little too worked up at Obama rallies, (yeah, he's a good-looking guy, and unfortunately, unlike men, some members of our gender are susceptible to attractiveness in the opposite sex) therefore we're all a bunch of hysterical dimwits.
I don't find the following nonsequitur all that rib-tickling: "The theory that women are the dumber sex -- or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents -- is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence."
If Charlotte Allen wants to call herself stupid, (I'll admit she has a tendency to display gaping holes in logic) then she can speak for herself -- as she does here: "I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can't add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don't even know how many pairs of shoes I own."
And then, "I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men."
And those skills are meaningless? The only skills that matter are the ones at which men statistically excel? That bill of goods sounds familiar. (All women who excel at these other skills, or excel in a spectacular way at any skill, even prissy, frou frou ones like memory and language, are "outliers," according to Allen -- yep, George Eliot and Elizabeth I, Sappho, and Margaret Thatcher were barely women at all. Well, of course... One refused to marry and the other called herself George. It all makes sense. And Sappho was a lesbian. I'll leave Margaret Thatcher alone for now. But Allen is obviously the rare exception of an analytical female, if she can see through these historic women's accomplishments -- each not just equal but superlative in her field -- and conclude that they were merely freaks of nature.)
Yeah, too bad women these days can't take a joke. It must be a hardwired deficiency in our ability to delight in tired, warmed-over insults in a transparent new guise.