Make 'em laugh

I agree absolutely that there are and have been funny women. As I noted, I enjoy witty women -- some of my best friends ... etc. And I think one of the greatest of TV humorists has been Susan Harris, the creator-producer of Soap -- aka, the original Arrested Development.

But I have to say that giving individual examples of funny women tends to prove Hitchens' point, don't you think? In other words, they tend to be the exceptions (the fact that women were excluded from the performing/writing comedy tradition until relatively recently would be an obvious counterpoint to make here, but Hitchens more or less waves it away).

But, Lisa, to Hitchens' defense, he not only references Fran and Nora -- he calls them up and asks them about his theories. You see, he makes exceptions for lesbians (Fran and Ellen Degeneres) and Jews. Kind of him.

Michael:

The weakness in a couple of your examples of funny women is that they're funny performers who were generally relating a male writer's dialogue. Most male comics, if they're not spouting their own material, are generally spouting other guys'.

Jerome

Um, Lucille Ball? Gracie Allen? Gilda Radner? And the list goes on...

On the literary side, who's funnier than Jane Austen (OK, Jonathan Swift, but you get my point). At his Manhattan literary soirees, does Hitchens never bump into Fran Leibowitz? Nora Ephron? Maureen Dowd?

If Hitchens really wants to write persuasive essays that ignore all facts contrary to his point, perhaps the Creation Science folks would like to hire him.

I am reminded of the Lenny Bruce routine, responding to the racist cliche, "Would you want one of them to marry your daughter?' In this sketch, Lenny imagines forcing the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan to say whether he would rather marry a black, black woman or a white, white woman, when the black woman is Lena Horne and the white woman is Kate Smith.

"If we want to get down to basics, let's persecute the ugly people," Lenny said.

That is the issue here, regardless of gender. Unattractiveness is pain in this culture. Humor is an excellent tool for coping with pain. It is also a devestating weapon of self defense. If you are small and weak, what better way is there to keep from getting beaten up than to tell a joke that makes the bully laugh? If you are being tormented, what better way to change the subject, than to mock someone else's shortcomings?

I recall laughing out loud at the writing of Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, and the performances of Myrna Loy (in the "Thin Man" movies), Audrey Meadows (in "The Honeymooners"), etc., etc., There was smartness is their humor, but an edge that suggested a lot of pain.

Of course, I should also mention the exquisite comic timing of the decidedly attractive but no less tormented Marilyn Monroe in movies like "The Seven Year Itch." I think humor emerges from inner demons, not from gonads.

I'm not surprised that Hitchens turns a discussion of comedy into a sexist claim of male supremacy in humor. He's not exactly the smartest bear in the zoo, even if he writes for a self-important magazine like Vanity Fair. He should go back to writing laughably wrong-headed screeds about the Iraq War.

My highly tuned sense of humor comes from the fact that I had to "contend with the really important, messy things in life -- giving birth and raising kids" while my husband thought it was strictly woman's work.

And for the record:
1) Brad is the pits, except in Thelma & Louise,
2) Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas are not good looking,
3) I don't like the Simpsons,
4) I hate the wives in the sitcoms you listed,
5) and Sandra Bullock cracks me up. She would be great playing Stephanie Plum if a movie is ever made of Janet Evanovich's books.

Of course, the story was always that Berle had one other advantage over most lesser men....