Comments on: Women are not as funny as men.

By: HP

HP — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:03:03 +0000

Oh and by the way I am a very funny mother fucker in real life and in turn I am probably the hardest person to make laugh…90% of the time my laughs are courtesy and only people that really know me know when I let out a real laugh…and I can’t recall one time having a woman make me REALLY laugh…they seem dull and uninteresting to me. Thankfully they have tits to make up for it.

By: LOL

LOL — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:57:39 +0000

This is a horrible and fallacious article….I also have a sneaking suspicion that some jew bulldyke was holding you at gunpoint while you wrote it so I forgive you. Just make sure to come back and update this to tell the truth about women being as funny as a rotting corpse when your life is no longer in danger.

By: Stacy

Stacy — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:46:34 +0000

Greg– 🙂

…Lisa Lampanelli, Paula Poundstone, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French (how could I have forgotten those two!?), Madeline Kahn, Sophie Tucker, Moms Mably, Rusty Warren….

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:49:33 +0000

Stacy, you crack me up!!!

(LOL)

Also worth pointing out is that about half of the male comedians are not funny.

By: Stacy

Stacy — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:32:39 +0000

Adding to bcoppola’s list, off the top of my head–

Brett Butler (in her early, pre-sitcom days, she was brilliant, and probably could be again). Betty White. Laura Kightlinger (Who? She should be a household name, but isn’t. I blame sexism.) Stephanie Miller. Dorothy Parker. Florence King. (The latter two from literature. King wrote one of the funniest books published in the 20th century.)

How about successful female comedian talk show hosts

How many people, I wonder, know that Letterman’s show was co-created by Merril Markoe (Letterman famously said she was funnier that he was). How many know that The Daily Show was created by two women, Madeleine Smithberg and Lizz Winstead, and that Winstead quit because the original host, Craig Kilborn (whom she had nothing to do with hiring) was such a sexist ass.

The fact is, the culture tends to not see women. And when a woman mines humor from female experience–as makes sense–males, who are our main cultural arbiters and don’t share that experience, will be less interested. (Given misogyny, some will simply dismiss it with contempt.)

By: voss

voss — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:12:57 +0000

My personal favorite was Phyllis Diller. She actually retooled the stand up’s material. Prior to Phyllis’ time, the standard recipe was to set up the joke, then deliver a punch line (set-up punch-line; set-up punch-line, etc.). Phylllis developed the set-up with multiple punch-lines. This meant that she got more laughs per minute than other comedians. Here is one of her jokes.

Last month we had our wedding anniversary. Fang gave me a present.
It was luggage.
It was packed.
With my mother.

By: julian

julian — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:53:18 +0000

“You suck! Now show us your jugs!”

If I ever hear someone say that they’ll be getting maced… Which they should be grateful for. I could cut them with my knife but I won’t.

By: The Ys

The Ys — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:32:39 +0000

I think this particular attitude boils down to: is the funny person telling a joke about not-totally-consensual sex or saying something ridiculously derogatory toward women?

If yes (to any of the above), then it’s funny!

If no, then it must be a woman. Who let her onstage, anyway?

By: interrobang

interrobang — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:03:02 +0000

Goldie Hawn, for another.

Andre, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. How you can be friends with Jan and Sian and Arwen and still hold attitudes like that blows my mind. (Yeah, I know who you are. If you think about it, you know who I am, too.)

By: unbound

unbound — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:15:24 +0000

From my standpoint, success at the top of any industry has less to do with raw talent than it does being very aggressive. The fact that there are more top earning males than females speaks more to that aggressiveness than anything else (I’ve dealt with a number of C-level executives in my career, read a good deal about corporate top-level executives, and that has been a consistent denominator).

They can’t be bad comedians and make it to the top, but they don’t have to be the best comedians to make it to the top.

Personally, I’ve seen as many funny female comedians as male comedians.