I was doing what I do every day, searching news sites for interesting links to post on the MOMocrats' Facebook page, and wound my way over to the Huffington Post humor section, which reliably links to the best comedy bits by Stewart, Colbert and other late night comics.
That's where I caught this piece, highlighted on the section's front page: Five Biggest Secrets Women Don't Want Men to Know, by Mark C. Miller, who is listed as a "humorist."
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why the editors chose to showcase it. I don't find it remotely funny, or even mildly amusing. I do think it's a peek into the male psyche ("Women are just pretending to have periods...to give themselves a one-week reprieve from men's non-stop groping"? REALLY?)
But reading this piece did remind me of the conversations I used to have with the Tonight Show writers, back in the days when I had aspirations of writing sitcoms myself. The guys (and they were ALL guys) were of the opinion that the reason there were so few females in the writing room was because women are not inherently funny -- and that most of us had no sense of humor.
If "funny" is described as the kind of Johnny Carson sketch where all the jokes were at the expense of a younger, blonder, dumber, large-breasted woman, then they were right. I never found any of that material very amusing. And I always thought of that as a disconnect between the sexes, where we just have different frames of reference. There will always be jokes and sight gags that strike more men as funny... and vice versa.
The problem is, you don't get to see much women's humor on the air.
I know that in some respects, things are better now than they were 30 years ago, when it was a novelty to see a female stand-up booked on the Tonight Show. And I know that Tina Fey covered this in her best selling book (which I have yet to read). But when you watch the Emmys and hear the names of the comedy nominees, few of them are women.
My blood started to boil while watching last week's OWN airing of the documentary, "Miss Representation," which listed the startling statistic that even now, only about 10% of the writers, producers and directors of movies and television are female.
The Tonight Show writers may have been right about me. I am probably not funny enough to have made it in sitcoms -- at least, not now that I am a bitter 55-year-old mother looking for a job in the worst employment market since the Great Depression. But I wasn't always like this -- and if I'd had the same kind of mentoring and training opportunities as some of the ex-Harvard guys I used to work for, I might not have been stuck as the woman who typed the scrips and answered the phones.
And as depressed and bitter as I currently am, I DO have a sense of humor. I just prefer jokes that are funny -- like this stand-up routine by my friend, Amy Anderson.
Yes, now Amy is totally funny (thanks for sharing that bit and the giggle!!!)
Posted by: liz | October 26, 2011 at 03:43 PM