Call it ostrich syndrome. Or pop-cultural illiteracy.

But no one at our house sat riveted to the Katie-fest Tuesday night. Or Wednesday, for that matter.

There were homework assignments to complete and football games to attend, meals to prepare and laundry to wash, critiques to type for an editorial writers convention.

Whether new CBS anchor Katie Couric exhibited sufficient gravitas to transition from morning smiley face to evening anchor somehow didn’t make the list of things that matter.

I confess that I’ve hardly watched more than the occasional 10-second sound bite of the “Today” show, the morning institution that made Couric an American icon. So the loyalty factor was missing.

The hopelessly overblown CBS hype about Couric’s shift to the oh-so-important nighttime report simply didn’t persuade. Nor did the novelty of the first female solo nightly news anchor capture the imagination.

And who could take seriously the hyperbole from female opinion columnists hyperventilating about Couric’s elevation from cute to credible? One tied Couric’s new gig to people taking Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice more seriously and finally bringing themselves to vote for a female president – a non sequitur extraordinaire. Another said that women “need” Couric’s personal $15 million fairy tale to have a happy ending.

Just as bad, if not worse, was a (male) media analyst’s analogizing Couric’s hiring to a “Hail Mary pass” intended to restore relevance to CBS News.

That leaves Couric playing the hunk of inflated leather heaved on a wing and a prayer, with a last gasp, to score an impossible ratings bonanza. She’s just a plaything, then, not treasured for her own inherent value but for the end to which she is merely a means.

With all due respect, it’s hard to see how the success or failure of one TV personality in raising a network’s numbers carries much meaning for anyone but that particular woman.

But there’s the breaking-through-the-gender- bias-glass-ceiling element, you say. Because she’s a woman, she’ll be judged more harshly than men.

The CBS publicity department made that almost a self-fulfilling prophecy when it airbrushed a photo to make Couric look trimmer than her actual more-to-love self. As though appearance, not substance, is what really matters.

A more important consideration, though, is: Will Couric’s being embraced by evening audiences cure cancer?

Will it end poverty in single-parent homes headed by women?

Will it improve wages or conditions for working women who have always been too busy supporting their families to commune with morning TV and too busy feeding them at night to care who’s delivering the news?

Maybe I exaggerate. But even if Couric is phenomenal in her new role (and if she is, more power to her), how does that define progress for women?

She’ll be a novelty for one day, a week, even a month. And she’ll make it possible for women to aspire to three whole jobs in all of the infotainment industry: anchor chairs at the tradition-bound broadcast alphabet networks. That does not, should not and cannot be a barometer for the capabilities of millions of women in the workplace, in the limelight, in public life or private enterprise.

It’s all well and good for one individual to get wildly overpaid to perform a job she enjoys. But opportunities for women will grow more from women sitting on the Supreme Court, in Cabinet positions, in Congress, in statehouses, in college presidencies, in high-ranking military posts, in corporate offices and other places where policymakers can improve the everyday lives of women from all walks of life.