It Takes A Village To Laugh: Late-Night Comedy Needs Women

The cable network Comedy Central looked all over the world for a new host to replace the departing Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, I am assuming. From that search, they have chosen Trevor Noah, 31, a comedian from South Africa.  Mr. Noah is very new to the business--like Mr. Stewart was when he started-- and has done a few spots on The Daily Show. In all the world, the suits at this cable network could not find a woman who is intelligent and funny enough to host a comedy news show?

I know it’s about money. Comedy Central probably feels that Americans will happily watch a man deliver funny punch lines about the news—they have stats that this is true.  But I wonder what this says about our culture where we still cannot place a woman in a host position on late-night television (for very long, at least). Comedy Central has now twice filled vacant spots with black men: first Larry Wilmore in the slot that was held by Stephen Colbert, and now Mr. Noah. Larry Wilmore puts race front and center, wonderfully ridiculing our perceptions and understanding of racism. Why can’t we do the same with sexism? The powers-that-be must believe that audiences still don’t feel comfortable with women delivering humor in a powerful position. Perhaps it’s too upsetting; we’re not ready to be made fun of by a woman.

And isn’t it interesting that in the space of a few weeks, late-night television has chosen a foreign born performer to sit in the chairs as hosts of two different interview shows.   The Late-Late Show chose James Corden, an actor and comedian from the UK.   Do we not trust ourselves to be funny and intelligent about the now global community? There may be some truth to that. Americans have tended to be very good at navel gazing, and not particularly adept at understanding global complexities, so it is particularly hard for Americans to make fun of them. Or so we may think. We may feel better trusting a non-American to tell us how to laugh at international issues.

It is perhaps unthinkable, the idea that a woman could help us laugh at, and understand, global concerns. Women are at the heart of most communities; most of us understand what’s what, who’s who and how things work in any given society. It takes a village, and women are often the un-official heads of villages, if not the official heads. To create humor, i.e to break the rules, one needs to understand them. And for survival, women have for centuries followed those rules. We know how to laugh at them.

Even though the world basically acknowledges that women are indeed funny, women are very intelligent; we still cannot seem to be comfortable with a woman to lead us in humor. We may be on the verge of electing a woman president next year, but one wonders if that will have much of an affect on women’s status in the world of comedy.  We may be ready to have a woman handle that 3 am emergency phone call. But have a woman ridicule us?  We just may think that is far too scary.