Daily Inspiration Quote by Erma Bombeck

Polls get treated like scripture until they say something that offends our lived experience, and Erma Bombeck knows exactly how to puncture that reverence. Her joke isn’t really about infidelity; it’s about the cozy authority of numbers and the way we outsource judgment to statistics that feel scientific but often aren’t humane, contextual, or even plausible. The punchline lands because it weaponizes domestic common sense: lunch is sacred, lunch is practical, lunch is the one break women reliably get. So if a survey claims women are swapping that for sex en masse, the data isn’t merely suspect, it’s culturally illiterate.

Bombeck’s intent is to restore skepticism with a laugh. She’s mocking the breathless way sensational polling gets packaged and repeated, especially when it turns women into headline bait. The subtext is sharper: women’s time is rationed, their “free” hours surveilled by responsibility, and any story that imagines them as carefree libertines is written by people who don’t understand the logistics of ordinary life. Her line quietly defends women by refusing the premise that they’re either saints or scandals; they’re busy.

Context matters. Bombeck built an empire on the suburban, middle-class female viewpoint, translating the exhaustion and comedy of domestic labor into mainstream media. In that world, the absurdity isn’t that desire exists; it’s that anyone thinks it would outrank a sandwich and ten minutes of peace. The wit is breezy, the critique isn’t: statistics without texture can become a kind of condescension.