So liberal-leaning Vanity Fair apparently has no problem with the all-male club that is late-night comedy programming.
The October 2015 issue cover is clad with the usual suspects of late-night television, which included Stephen Colbert,Conan O'Brien, Trevor Noah, James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Larry Wilmore, Jimmy Fallon and Bill Maher. That’s fine and all, but where are the women? Aren’t liberals – especially in Hollywood and the media - always the ones harping on how comedy acts are still too heavily dominated by dudes?
Yet Vanity Fair slaps a cover on the front of their magazine celebrating none other than the good ole boys club of comedy with the headline, "Why Late-Night Television Is Better than Ever.”
The hypocrisy is astounding. How could late-night television possibly be better than ever when it’s basically blackballing women on the cover page? Where’s the “fairness” in that?
The article, written by David Kamp, acknowledged (or tried to) the lack of women in late-night comedy:
What's conspicuously missing from late-night, still, is women…How gobsmackingly insane is it that no TV network has had the common sense — and that's all we're talking about in 2015, not courage, bravery, or even decency — to hand over the reins of an existing late-night comedy program to a female person? While Amy Schumer has acknowledged that she turned down The Daily Show, happy where she is at Comedy Central, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that Chelsea Peretti, Megan Amram, and Jen Kirkman, to name but three contenders, are alive, sentient, funny, and presumably open to taking a meeting. (And how great would Lea DeLaria be as an M.C., going places Ed McMahon never dared to go? It’d be weird, wild stuff.)
Kamp tried to look on the bright side for women comedians by tossing them a few bones:
Fortunately, comedic redress is on its way, in the form of two new shows created from scratch, Samantha Bee’s for TBS and Chelsea Handler’s for Netflix. (Both shows are due in 2016.) Two female hosts plus the 10 men featured here is still a long way from a late-night that truly looks like America. But the next version of this story’s opening picture will be that much brighter.
Really? Because those same women Kamp mentioned could’ve just as easily been on the cover of Vanity Fair in an “up and coming” feature.
Possibly trying to answer Kamp’s question of why there are not many women in comedy, USA Today cited a piece by Christopher Hitchens in 2007 from Vanity Fair titled "Why Women Aren't Funny”:
For some reason…women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing, which is why we admire Lucille Ball and Helen Fielding, who do see the funny side of it.
Over the summer, Michael Eisner took a lot of heat for telling a crowd.
"From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman," he said. "By far. They usually — boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online — but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you (Goldie Hawn, his panel-mate) being an exception, are not funny."
So does that mean only ugly women can be funny and that’s why there were no female comedians weren’t on the cover along with their counterparts?
One thing’s for certain, Vanity Fair is more vane than fair.
