Archive for the 'Media' Category

Here’s the link to my BBC interview:

Women & Hollywood Talks Oscar Nominations on the BBC

I participated in the blog talk radio show called Tomatoes in the Trenches which focuses on women over 40.

We talked about women, Hollywood and the Oscar season.

Please listen:

Hey folks- I’ll be on the blog talk radio show of Tomato in the Trenches, a lively gabfest for women over 40, tomorrow, Wednesday at 1pm EST.

Here’s the description:

The Skinny on Women, Hollywood and the Oscars!

Women have the right to vote in this country, heck, we had a woman running for President and Vice President in 2008 so we have come a long way “baby”.  HOWEVER, have you noticed our representation and our rights in the movie industry is in the dark ages. The Awards Season and all it’s glamour and spectacle is upon us. So what is the deal with Hollywood and sexism? When was the last time a woman won Best Director?  How often do you see a woman over 50 take home the best actress prize? Any possibilities of seeing change for women at this years Oscars? Well we have dynamo Melissa Silverstein from the influential and ground breaking blog “Women AND Hollywood” and she will be sharing her views, insights and predictions on Women and Hollywood and the Oscars. Wearing an evening gown while listening is optional.

You can listen live (or whenever it works best for you) here.

Last night at the gym,  I noticed a women’s soccer game was being covered on the evening newscast on ABC.  Shocked and surprised because women’s sports, especially college sports hardly gets any coverage on ESPN let alone ABC, I looked up and saw that they were showing highlights of unsportspersonlike conduct of one player- Elizabeth Lambert -- of New Mexico during a playoff game.

This woman plays hard.  But you know what, girls play hard.  Way back in the day when I played I came home every weekend all banged up.  We want our girls to play hard to compete.  But there is a line and clearly she crossed it with the ponytail pulldown.  All the other infractions shown just gear you up for the ponytail pulldown.

See for yourself.

The reason why this concerns me is how excited people are getting by this behavior.  Here’s a piece of a post from Women’s Sports Blog:

Perhaps even more outrageous than Elizabeth Lambert’s behavior in the New Mexico/BYU game, and it’s the worst I’ve ever seen in women’s sports (and obviously this is not meant to be a commentary on how women should be held to different standards, but rather it’s still not as bad as some things I’ve seen in men’s sports), is the reaction of some men who rave about how ‘hot’ it is.

This video has gone viral (I just saw it on MSNBC again and different version on you tube have viewers in the millions) but seriously, is this what people really think that women’s sports is?  Why is it the media only focuses on the bad behavior in women’s sports?  Why is it only the catfights and outbursts like from Serena Williams at the US Open become the news?  What about all the great plays that happen every day all across the country.  How come this amazing article from a dad about watching his daughter play baseball didn’t go viral, but the pony tail pulldown is everywhere.

I’m not trying to excuse Lambert’s behavior.  She has been suspended and who knows what will happen for her senior season.  There are people calling for her to not only be kicked off the team but also kicked out of school.  Let’s remember there is also about a young woman’s education.  She probably gets a scholarship since it is a Division 1 team and she has one more year of school.

The point is that 35 plus years into Title IX we have young women across the country competing at incredibly high levels.  They sometime lose their tempers and need to get some help to deal with their issues which probably are not just on the field.  But to vilify this young woman or to think that violence on the field is “hot” is just fu**ed up.  We have so much work to do with how we deal with women and sports and this is a perfect opportunity for parents to talk about sports and violence and this can be a lesson to educate all of us on acceptable sports behavior for both boys and girls.

Patronizing Women’s Violence (Women’s Sports Blog)

Title IX Dad (The American Prospect)

Who said webisodes were just for the young things?  More Magazine and Candace Bushnell aka creator of the Sex and the City columns and the woefully underloved Lipstick Jungle (now that Ben Silverman is gone they should bring the show back except the women all have other jobs now-idiots!) are teaming up to create a web series about women over 40 in the workplace.

Sounds awesome.

The show is written Bushnell and produced by director Ellen Gittelsohn (Roseanne, Designing Women) and will star Jennie Garth (the original 90210) and Talia Balsam (Mad Men).

Series will start airing in September.

Bushnell will also pea column in the September and October columns of More.

Candace Bushnell web series in the works (HR)

Katie Couric has won a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism from the Annenberg Center at USC for her interviews with Sarah Palin.

Here’s what she won it for:

Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign

• Katie Couric, the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, was honored for her extraordinary, persistent and detailed multi-part interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin which judges called a “defining moment in the 2008 presidential campaign.”

All the winners

I wish I could say I was surprised at this photo.  I’ve been looking at it for the last couple of days trying to figure out what’s so funny.  Is it that that guys can get away with being fat in Hollywood and women have to be skinny?  Is it that we wouldn’t want to see any fat people naked so these fat guys have to wear bodysuits?  Is it the whiff of homophobia with Paul Rudd sniffiing Seth Rogen’s ear?  Is Jason Segel’s presence a dig at Rachel McAdams who pulled out of the 2006 cover because she didn’t want to be naked?

And I want to say to Annie Leibovitz – why?  Why do these sexist images?  You just got screwed for being a lesbian having to pay a major estate tax because of your inheritance from Susan Sontag.  Aren’t these issues on the same continuum?  Does being an artist mean that you can be sexist?

I also love how Vanity Fair likes to anoint people as the next big thing.   These guys are comedy legends?  Please. According to dictionary.com a legend is: a collection of stories about an admirable person; a person who is the center of such stories. Feels like they’re stretching it just a bit by calling Jonah Hill a comedy legend.  Am I the only one who thinks that.

The package is like a list of the guys that hang out with Judd Apatow telling fart jokes.  And the layout even annoys me.  Guys like Jonah Hill, Danny McBride and Russell Brand get their own pictures while Leslie Mann (wife of Judd Apatow) Anna Farris and even Amy Poehler are in pictures with guys.  Women can be comedy legends just as long as they are with men.  And don’t get me started on Seth Rogen as Frida Kahlo.

Each week I listen to the podcast of The Business a behind the scenes look at Hollywood.  The show does some great interviews and brings forward voices and issues relevant to the Hollywood machine.  I usually learn a lot when I listen to it.

The current host Claude Brodesser-Akner is leaving, and veteran journalist Kim Masters (NPR, Slate) will take over next month.   It will be a nice to have a woman’s voice talking about the business of entertainment.

Check out the show here

Each year in anticipation of the Oscars, Vanity Fair usually puts some young scantily clad actresses on the cover.  This year, Obama gets the cover and the package inside is directors and actors.

The first thing I noticed is that there is not a single female director included in the piece.  I know that not many women have been nominated, but this year they ABSOLUTELY could justify a picture of Melissa Leo and Courtney Hunt for Frozen River.  They included Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke.  Aronofsky wasn’t nominated and Hunt was nominated for her screenplay.  I found the photo of Penelope Cruz and Woody Allen creepy and thought the photo of Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann was weird with his hand under her chin.  I did like the photo of Meryl Streep and John Patrick Shanley.

I just wish that these people would start to think a little bigger, beyond the 10 people we always see in every issue of every magazine.  It’s getting boring.

Something Just Clicked (Vanity Fair)

Vogue is not in the habit on putting women of color on the cover.  Last summer Italian I did a special issue with all women of color.   Here’s a quote from an earlier piece Vogue ran on Michelle Obama:

“I say this not to be modest, but there are so many young people who could be me. There’s nothing magical about my background. I am not a supergenius. I had good parents and some good teachers and some decent breaks, and I work hard. Every other kid I knew could have been me, but they got a bad break and didn’t recover. It’s like I tell the young people I talk to: The difference between success and failure in our society is a very slim margin. You almost have to have that perfect storm of good parents, self-esteem, and good teachers. It’s a lot, which is why Barack and I believe so passionately about investing in education and strengthening institutions.”

God, I love her.

Not Only in Vogue, but on It (Washington Post)
The Natural (Vogue)

For kicking ass and taking names.  A year ago, they said she’s be gone after the election.  Now, she’s back doing kick ass stories on domestic violence committed by returning soldiers, and last weekend’s incredibly moving interview with the pilot of the US Airways flight that went in the Hudson.

“I mean, you know, listen, it’s not a lot of fun being pummeled in the press,” Couric said on Reliable Sources last weekend. “But on the other hand, I’ve always had enough confidence in my abilities and my work to know that sometimes there are larger issues at work here about the role of women in society and, you know, sort of – I didn’t really take it that personally.”

Katie Couric silences critics with work on ‘CBS Evening News,’ ‘60 Minutes’ (NY Daily News)
Good News, at Last (Washington Post)

Jennifer Weiner (author of several hugely popular books including Good in Bed) ponders on her blog asking whether white male memoirists get more respect from critics than women do.

A few questions about the dirty-white-boy books (and yes, as far as I can tell, the genre of the male midlife drugs-sex-and-losing-everything confessional is populated entirely by white guys.)

Are journalists more likely to have their lives implode, or just more likely to have their accounts of said implosions published?

Why is the Times so fascinated by these stories (two of the four that I read had their first lives in the pages of the Sunday Times Magazine)?

What would happen if a woman wrote the same kind of confessional memoir about busting up a marriage, shucking her kids and spouse like old clothes, diving into drugs or porn and/or ending up homeless? My guess is that the critical reaction (curated, as it is, mostly by middle-aged white guys) would not be nearly as approving.

If you’re a dude and you write about, say, smoking pot with your prepubescent son, scoring coke with your daughters asleep in your car, or spewing uncontrollable diabetes-related diarrhea all over your son’s back seat, well then you, sir, have written “a bruising survival story,” or a “brave, heartfelt, often funny, often frustrating book.”

If you’re a chick who sleeps around and lives to tell (and sell) the tale, you’re greedy, vain and charmless. If you’re a guy who spends nights on end looking at Internet porn and days investing in drug companies that overcharge cancer patients for their cures, then you’re “formidably smart.”

Very interesting.
A Moment of Jen

PS- I love the film version of her book In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine.  I never understood why people didn’t see it.

Forbes has just published a list of the top 25 influential liberals in the media.  Women rate four of the slots out of 25.  Give me a break.  Aren’t liberals supposed to be more progressive and in turn more inclusive of everyone including women?  Why aren’t there more influential women in media?  What about some of the women bloggers like Jane Hamsher?  And where are Tina Brown and Katrina vanden heuvel?  What about the women of the View?  Joy Behar totally kicked ass all through the election season.  This list just doesn’t cut it.

The women included are:

2- Arianna Huffington

6- Oprah Winfrey

7- Rachel Maddow

15- Maureen Dowd

The ascent of Rachel Maddow continues at am amazingly breakneck pace.  Hope she can keep up with it all.

The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media (Forbes)

In another segment from the I can’t believe this hasn’t happened yet, the Washington Post has appointed its first female Managing Editor.  Elizabeth Spayd a twenty year Post veteran will run the “hard” news room.

From Today’s Post coverage of itself:

“Spayd, 50, said that it feels “pretty cool” to break the gender barrier and that she hopes to increase The Post’s appeal to female readers.”

Washington Post Names Two Managing Editors (Washington Post)

When I was watching Frost/Nixon the excellent film by Ron Howard about the interviews that David Frost did with Richard Nixon, I was struck by the scenes between Nixon and his staffer played by Kevin Bacon and how they were convinced that Nixon would come out the victor because Frost would not be able to challenge Nixon intellectually, and because he was perceived as “light.”

The reason why these scenes struck me is because it dawned on me that is probably exactly what was going through Sarah Palin’s handlers minds when they booked her interview with Katie Couric.  She’ll be easy, she’s light and of course something like, she’s a girl.

The same thing happened to Palin as it did to Nixon.  Sheer, total destruction.

In a Q&A piece with Portfolio Couric talked about sexism and feminism.  She’s continues to be a rock star in my book.

A lot of people complained about sexism in the coverage of this election. Did you see it? I do think there is still sexism in the coverage. We’re still in a place in our society where sexism is more palatable than racism. It’s not as repugnant to people. There is still a mentality that you can make jokes about how someone’s hot or a babe, and about gender roles, in a way that is completely taboo vis-à-vis race.

Why do you think so many people had a negative reaction to Hillary Clinton? She’s ambitious. And I think there are still qualities that when women exhibit them are less acceptable than when men naturally exhibit them—like ambition.

You asked Sarah Palin if she thought of herself as a feminist. Do you consider yourself one? Oh yeah. I am. I am. I feel very strongly that women should have equal opportunity. I believe strongly in civil rights. I don’t want to get into too much else.

I’m Not an Idiot, You Know? (Portfolio)

I get up pretty early in the morning to do my writing.  I like to write with TV or radio (because I am a pop culture and news junkie.)  Some mornings I watch the Rachel Maddow show from the previous evening, but lately I’ve been watching Morning Joe on MSNBC.  I clearly don’t watch the show for Joe Scarborough the forner Republican congressman who does nothing for me and sometimes makes me want to hit him… I’ve been watching the show for his partner — Mika Brzezinski who I find is a total breath of fresh air.

This is a woman who grew up with a dad with National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter and ironically got fired from CBS two years ago when they brought Katie Couric in.  I kind of remember Mika from a couple of years ago in an earlier incarnation on MSNBC where she co-hosted an afternoon news show with Ashley Banfield.

What I love about her is that she is the one who keeps things moving and focused.  She’s usually surrounded by guys, Joe, Willie Geist the news guy (please tell me why this guy is on this show) Mike Barnicle, occasionally Pat Buchanan.  There are other female guests, but none are parked for hours like the guys are.  She doesn’t let them get away with anything and calls them on their crap and also manages to get in some really strong opinions.

I love her even more because she refused to read a story about Paris Hilton getting out of jail.  This You Tube video has been viewed almost 4 million times.

I know we don’t have a woman president (I am I’m kind of over that) but aside from Barack and Michelle Obama, the other most interesting stories this fall have been about women especially Tina Fey, Rachel Maddow and Katie Couric (btw love the new hair Katie).

Tina and Rachel have been everywhere. The latest love for these two women is in Vanity Fair and Newsweek. A common through line in both pieces is how they are outsiders which I found so interesting and endearing and probably why I like them so much. Most of the comments about the Fey Vanity Fair piece has been about how she got her scar and weight loss (Yeah Weight Watchers!- you should sign her up as a spokesperson!) but here are some other interesting tidbits that intrigued me.

Fey’s friend Kay Cannon, a 30 Rock writer, says that Tina has remained self-deprecating even as she has glammed up. “She’ll always see herself as that other, the thing she came from.”

Fey’s acerbity comes from her mother (the Greek side), who has what Richmond calls “drag-queen humor—that bitter, extremely caustic kind of stab-you-in-the-heart humor.” Mrs. Fey played a weekly poker game with her friends. “I loved hanging out with the ladies, because they were very funny, and a little bit mean, and had lots of Entenmann’s products,” Fey says.

Her friend Damian Holbrook, a TV Guide writer who attended a nearby high school and whose first name she took for the gay character in Mean Girls, says she was like the Janis character in that movie, the sweet girl in an oversize Shaker sweater who didn’t run with the cool crowd or strut around to get guys, yet had the wit to burn the mean girls if she wanted to.

She didn’t have great athletic ability but played tennis, and, citing Kay Cannon, says that team sports breed “a different kind of woman,” with a “game-on, let’s-do-it work ethic”; she hopes her daughter will grow up to play sports.

And Maddow in Newsweek

All the ensuing hype and excitement about Maddow’s rapid rise, and her quirks—the smart, self-described “butch dyke” who somehow broke into the cable-news boys’ club—has masked the true reason for her success. It’s not despite her differences from other talking heads, but because of them.

Maddow seems to have genuinely charmed younger viewers, a Twitter-savvy, podcasting generation that has hankered for someone more like them and delights in her use of “duh,” her obvious intelligence and authenticity, and her ability to be both idealistic and skeptical about politics. She eschews vanity and insists she won’t stop dressing “like a 13-year-old boy” when she can.

Maddow’s partner, artist Susan Mikula, believes the “unlikely” label is just code for lesbian: “She goes from Stanford to Oxford to activism to radio, then TV? What’s so unusual about that? Is it because she is a gay lady?”

The reason she and Mikula stay happily unmarried, says Mikula, is because “we both have a real fondness for the outsider part of our gay culture.”

What Tina Wants (Vanity Fair)
When Left is Right (Newsweek)

Jessica Wakeman, friend and former staffer at the Huffington Post took a look at how women are faring on the front page of her former site for FAIR.

Answer, not too good.

The site highlights 13 “featured blog posts” on the home page at a time, and that selection is updated regularly. Extra! recorded those featured bylines twice every weekday for nine weeks and coded them by gender.* During the study period (7/7/08–9/5/08), only 255 of 1,125 bylines—23 percent—belonged to women.

The Post does seem to be making a conscious effort to include women’s voices; despite the low percentages, the study found at least one female byline on the home page at all times. But if there is indeed such an effort, it stops far short of parity. Of the 89 times bylines were checked during the study, not once did the number of women’s bylines equal those belonging to men.

This is important because all the lefties read the Huff Post and I for one benefit from it when I post my stories on there.

Arianna- you gotta do better.

Huffington Post Mutes Women’s Voices (FAIR)

This is the fall that I started watching the news again with excitement because of the reemergence of Katie Couric and the swift ascendancy of Rachel Maddow. I never watch the news at 6:30. Who does? But when I am around, I turn on Katie. I even Tivoed all the debates on CBS cause I wanted to give her my eyeballs. Her kick ass interview with Sarah Palin helped seal the deal against Palin’s competence.

And Maddow, what more can I say except now I’m more tired cause I stay up late watching her. She gets watched before John Stewart. She’s just so good. And let me say that I noticed last week with all the talk about Larry Summer becoming Treasury chief she reminded us each night when his name came up that he didn’t think girls were good at math. She just reminds us that this is a remark that cannot be excused. She just loves politics, she has fun talking about this stuff and it makes it fun for us too.

Welcome to the new world order. Maybe they should let Maddow take over for Tim Russert on Meet the Press. How cool would that be?

Here are some choice quotes from recent pieces.

But against the odds—she wasn’t allowed the opportunity, for instance, to anchor a single presidential or vice presidential debate for CBS—Ms. Couric has used the 2008 presidential elections to make herself a commodity again. Not the too expensive piece of furniture the Tiffany network had bought and regretted, but the game-changing political journalist she aspired to be when she first took the Evening News. Hers was the most memorable interview of the 2008 election. Über political blogger Mark Halperin named her one of the five most important people in politics not running for president.

Her rising star has not only made life comfortable enough at CBS for her to use an interview with a reporter to request an hour-long program. According to The New York Times, others are looking to steal her: NBC News executives are currently considering her for the most coveted job in political journalism, as the next moderator of Meet the Press. (NY Observer)

And from the ever reliable Rebecca Traister at Salon:

In the final weeks of October, days before what many consider the most crucial election of our lifetimes, the probing interviews, fine-boned analysis and buzzy commentary showing up on television screens and Internet browsers all over the country are often delivered not in the deep rumble of a wizened Uncle Walt but in a higher register belonging to one of several female newscasters to have kicked ass, taken names and otherwise owned the coverage of the 2008 election.

Call it historical accident or mere coincidence, but this election, built as it has been around two history-making female candidates, traditional “women’s issues” like the economy and healthcare and the acknowledgment of the power of female voters, also happens to have been translated, interpreted and picked apart by women newscasters. And that’s something new.

A Star is Reborn (NY Observer)
The New American Classic (The Advocate)
Ladies of the Nightly News (Salon)

If you’re not watching or as of yesterday, podcasting the show – what are you waiting for? Her show totally rocks, is so interesting and informative. What I like best is that there are not 10 different people thinking they are smarter than everyone else competing for their two minutes of airtime. I used to watch AC 360 on CNN but haven’t since Rachel went on the air.

Here’s some interesting facts about Maddow:
She doesn’t own a TV set (but is thinking of buying one).
Her show has only been on a little over a month and she is beating Larry King in the key area of 25- to 54-year-olds.
Has increased viewership during her 9pm hour to 1.7 million from 800,000.

Go girl.
Fresh Face on Cable, Sharp Rise in Ratings (NY Times)