I stopped watching TDS after some infuriatingly dude-oriented joke about how A-Rod is so awesome, Jon would let him sleep with his wife. Not: so awesome that Jon would give his wife a high-five for sleeping with A-Rod. Not: so awesome that *Jon* would sleep with him. But: so awesome that Jon would pass the piece of property that is his wife to another dude for that other dude’s sexual gratification. That, to me, is clearly not a show that respects its female viewers.

Hire More Progressive Female Writers and Correspondents Movement: “Haw haw, funny letter. However, bullshit, production staff is not creative staff. Hire more progressive female writers or else you guys are hypocrites.”

The Daily Show: “Creating jokes is a delicate but arduous task. If we mess with the process as it stands we will mess up the business model that has been working for us, and viewership will drop. If we do that we will be doing a disservice to our shareholders.”

HMPFWCM: “Do it or you’ll regret it.”

TDS: “Make us.”

HMPFWCM: [months of public shaming campaign, boycott, media harassment]

TDS: “Okay, fine, Jesus, we’ll shake it up. Just stop making us lose money.”

Or maybe it would all go nowhere, who knows.

These aren’t Daily Show problems, these are entertainment industry problems. Why are we crucifying TDS? What do we hope to gain from it? TDS is so far from the greatest offender. The show before TDS, on Comedy Central, (Tosh.0) is sexist, ignorant jokes from top to bottom.

Does TDS have room for improvement? Sure! But it also has a lot of smart and interesting and important things to say. I have not found this TDS vs feminists of the internet to be helpful or constructive at all.

The women who do step up — Kathy Griffin, Margaret Cho, Joan Collins, Sarah Silverman, Kirsten Schaal, Ellen, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and so on — are not just very funny, they’re pretty brave.

Your piece was great, Michelle, because it undercut Emily Gould’s arguments with finality but without viciousness. And because it brought the focus of the discussion back to where it should be: not whether women are funny, but that The Daily Show remains primarily a boy’s club, and members of the TDS fan club are allowed to ding Jon Stewart for it. We criticize because we care.

And yet when women complain that TDS has almost no on-air women, very few female guests and a 15-1 ratio of male-to-female writers, you’re neither suspicious nor displeased?

You’re daughter’s right about women in comedy. Provocative or edgy humor, when coming from women, tends to be labeled with the usual dismal stereotypes of “bitchy”, “shrill” or “well, I wouldn’t want to fuck her.”

Having said that, I know perfectly well that if the show had no on-air people of color, I’d be suspicious and displeased. I agree wholeheartedly with the posters who said they love the show but hope and expect that Jon & co. will do better vis-a-vis women. I’m not a big tv person, so maybe if I watched it night after night I’d be more upset about the disparity.

My 22 year old daughter and I had a thought-provoking chat about this yesterday. I told her that, in my experience, women are just not as funny as men, especially in stand-up. She suggested that this was at least partly due to my expectations, that is, she believes that we’re socialized to find men funnier than women. So if a man and a woman presented the same material, many people would laugh for the guy but not for the woman. Now I’m pondering this.

Thoughts, anyone?

No one is saying they don’t get it right more than they get it wrong, they’re saying that TDS can still do better. It isn’t enough in this world to say things aren’t as bad as they could be, you still have to point out the difference between the status quo and the potential inherent in the show.