While watching CBS anchor Katie Couric interview ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame on last night's '60 Minutes,' we couldn't help but notice a few things. Couric is way harsher on chicks than on dudes. Plame looks an awful lot like 'Sideways' star Virginia Madsen! Couric does not like being out-effervescenced on camera. Plame very clearly wants to be taken seriously, and should be. And yet. She does her first major television interview in four years wearing hiphuggers and dangly earrings. Before you jump all over us: This is the same as a man conducting an interview in shorts.

That said, is it fair that, because Plame is a woman, her looks are fair game? Is it fair that, as a looker, she's taken less seriously? Of course not. But life's not fair, sister.

Given these limited parameters (which we plan on tweaking when we're elected to chair the universe), we really do wish Plame had gone with a more professional look, if not because this was a story that deserved zero distraction from the serious issues at hand, then because, unlike us, there were probably plenty of people out there watching who don't know that a woman can both be sexy and be better at their jobs than they are.

Anyway! Takeaway points:

  • Plame's book, "Fair Game," is out today— and only 10% of the copy was redacted by CIA censors.
  • The White House was "cherry-picking" from the intelligence available in order to make their case for invading Iraq (audible gasp).
  • Plame didn't think husband Joe Wilson's trip to Niger would put her career, her assets or her cover in jeopardy.
  • Whoops—Plame says that when her identity as a covert spy was leaked to the press by Bob Novak in 2003, every operation she'd ever worked on was compromised and yes, people got hurt.
  • Appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair, "in a Garbo pose, in your husband's jaguar," as Couric put it (mrow!), was "more trouble than it was worth," according to Plame, who was chewed out by her boss for the cover.
  • Her husband Joseph Wilson goes a little ape-shit over Couric's assertion that in all likelihood, neither Scooter Libby's wife, nor Dick Cheney's, are covert CIA spies. "You don't know! You don't know!" he shouts. Eeep!