The first thing I saw was the dried-out stalks of legs, suspending a ludicrously tiny mini-skirt. Above the mini-miniskirt was a tight t-shirt, stretched across a late middle-aged swollen watermelon of tummy. Still higher, was a grandmother’s face framed by a teenaged bob and a hat that said “Code Pink.”

I was in Fox News Channels’ Green Room, which is normally a place a suits and power dresses.

Upon beholding the two women from Code Pink–one destined for the airwaves, the other said she was her “support” (for the emotionally grueling job of appearing on television)–my first thought was that they should be in a psychiatrist’s waiting room, not Fox’s.

It wasn’t what they had to say that made them mildly insane. It was how they dressed. While a 20-year old in a mini-skirt might get a respectful hearing on her Iraq war views, if only because she is seen as transitioning between teenhood and adulthood, a 60-year old in a mini-skirt is simply laughable and sad. Sorry, Code Pink activists should not be raiding their granddaughters’ closets. If they can’t see how the world sees them when they do, well, it is more evidence that age and wisdom have become unlinked.

It is also the way the Code Pinkers talked. Each one said that they were “frightened” by President Bush and that the war was “ugly.” These are literally childish complaints.

I couldn’t resist, so I asked: “When was the last time that you were in Iraq?”

Oh, they said, they would never go. It was too dangerous and so on.

But, I asked, how can you be sure if your views are correct if you haven’t seen the war first-hand?

They seemed puzzled by the question. They went on to cite television and print reports and activists they knew and so on.

Finally, I cut in. “You know that there are intelligence failures related to Iraq. What if there are media failures as well?”

Oh, don’t worry, the older one said. “We don’t watch Fox.”

Even their thinking is childish. So why does any respectable media outlet give them air time?