But to stay on topic… I also like the next sentence after the one about “no women, so sorry,” and that was the acknowledgment that some genres were ignored. You would think that they would have the grace to admit that it isn’t the best 100 of the year, but the best 100 that they bothered to pay attention to or read. And yes, that does mean that superior work by women and people working in despised genres will be ignored.

I’ve learned not to listen to all male critique and not read all male contributor lists.

They turn me off. They are simply sexist and they either don’t know t or don’t care. Not just biased, sexist, because if the group is all male and not one of them said, “hey, lets get someone from the 51% in here” that is sexist and ….idiotic.

That list, isn’t even worthy of my comment.

This, my friends, is a great example.

What Year Is This?

What I wanted to title this is “Are You New Here”? and yet I changed my mind because I am starting to realize that yeah, some people are new to this whole “sexism” thing. I had a weekend off, so I spent time catching up on some TV time, not the news channels, actually looking for shows. That was interesting, nothing, and I mean nothing was on, until I hit the biography channel. Two shows caught my eye, “Hippies” and “Sex In 69″, now that might hold my attention, since I lived it. Hippies is great and I recommend to anyone that has teenagers that think they are changing the world, to sit them down and watch this. But the show that really caught me was “Sex In 69″, I had no idea just how much the year 1969 changed the world. You see I graduated from high school in ’69, so I was busy living it, never thinking that history was in the making. This show was a huge reminder of what our generation “the baby boomers” were doing back then. All the major revolutions in culture were happening, and watching it, instead of living it was eye opening. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution, gay liberation, the civil rights, music, art, everything changed in this country in that year. We not only went to the moon, we changed this planet.

I’ve always known that I came from a very special time. Just our music alone tells me that. I think anyone that is my age deep down inside realizes that. Even though today most would think that we a very open minded people, it’s quite evident to some of us, that isn’t quite true. In a lot of ways we have gone backward, especially when it comes to all the “isms”. Sexism, racism, genderism, chauvinism, all those lovely “isms” are back stronger than ever. And does it confuse the hell out of me.

All the talk about what happen on Letterman and the sexism, only proves it. It proves that somewhere along the way from 1969 to 2009, the ball got dropped. Women have regressed 40 years, from sisterhood to “hey, I got mine, you get yours”. Especially in the comedy industry. Watching all these shows for women from The View to Joy Behar’s new show and their shock about this is truly laughable. Like I said earlier “Are you new here?”. More men writing for Leno and Letterman than women, really? Please whatever sisterhood we had has totally gone out and has been replaced by, well it hasn’t been replaced, it’s just plain gone. It doesn’t exist anymore, especially in the world of comedy, and especially in stand-up. Take some time and count the female headliners in clubs this week. If you get five, you’ll be counting in “comedy math”. You cannot and will not find five female headliners. Now, count the male headliners.

To quote one club owner “I already have four women headliners, that’s enough”. Are you serious? Four women, four weeks out of the year, the other 48, men, normally, three men, talking about the same thing men talk about—-mostly us.

If men are uncomfortable with women, especially in comedy, it’s because we know your show and we know your mind, you are idiots, nasty, stinky, arrogant idiots. And screw you, women are funny, and I have had enough of this bullshit.

And the fact that women that are in positions to help other women in comedy are sitting around in their happy hosting chairs even promoting this stupid line of questioning, makes them idiots too. I’m sorry ladies, I know just how much “sisterhood” we have in this business, none, nada, neit, uhuh, there is none. So stop, take a deep breathe and think about all this. Start asking the questions that we care about. Some of you were ready to hang Clarence Thomas, while some of us were saying “this woman is an idiot”, but then again I came from a different time period. I was a secretary back then, yes we had these problems, but we also had the phone number of the wife and the mistress, game over.

So to answer the question “Why is this still happening?” Answer: Because you let it, that’s why, and the ones of us that trying to stop it, well I think you know what we are called. Sisterhood is a memory, a good memory, but a memory still. It’s a shame that the young women of today never got to understand what that truly meant.

Thank you,

Caroline Picard