The Daily (Male) Show

Sarah Seltzer has a piece up on Jon Stewart and "'dude' culture" over at RH Reality Check. I've always enjoyed watching the Daily Show and, although I've been watching it less often since the writer's strike, Cristina Page noted that she was refused from the Daily Show to promote her book How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America while Ramesh Ponnuru was invited on the show to promote his right wing anti-choice book, The Party of Death. Furthermore, the Daily Show's list of guests in the last year didn't even come close to gender parity. In 2007, only 11 women sat in the chair across from Jon Stewart. Of those, seven were actresses and two represented the right wing, Margaret Spellings and Lynne Chenney. There are a number of Very Serious (read: mostly very boring) men that promote their books on the war or the economy. If you only got watched the Daily Show, you'd think that women didn't hold positions of power or write books. Most of the writers and on-air talent are men. It's probably just because women aren't funny. So much for a progressive comedy show.