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It all began with Irin Carmon's stinging accusations at Jezebel. As funny as the Daily Show can be for viewers, for female employees, "it's also a boys' club where women's contributions are often ignored and dismissed." Carmon continues to assert that currently, there is "less overt frat-boy humor, but that doesn't mean the institutionalized sexism is gone" and part of that institutionalized sexism is a climate unwelcoming to female writers and correspondents.
Carmon brought up the complaints of past female employees and on the surface, it seems as if they have a point. There are few female correspondents and only one -- Samantha Bee -- who seems to have any lasting power. Yet it's impossible for even the most rabid Daily Show viewer to know what goes on behind the scenes simply by watching Jon Stewart's commentary. Is he the funny, sweet guy we see in our living rooms each night, or leader of the frat?
But why is the Daily Show being held up as sexist television when other shows aren't being questioned about their ratio of male-to-female on-air personalities and writers? Who is questioning the number of men on Oprah or pointing out how few women are on Sports Center? And the point, of course, is that shows shouldn't be raked across the coals for having a certain number of either sex in any staff position.
The reality is that the Daily Show creates programming that appeals to their core audience. Women may like to watch it (and some of us ... cough ... have no choice when the television is in our bedroom and our husband turns it on while we are trying to finish a blog post), but with an audience that is admittedly 60 percent male, it makes sense that the comedy is tailored towards the majority. The View also tailors their programming towards their primarily female target audience. Without clearly knowing your audience and knowing how to create a product that appeals to your core audience, television shows founder.
Interestingly, the women of the Daily Show -- mostly those female employees, of which there are many, who do important work behind the scenes in order to produce the show -- responded with an open letter addressed to "People Who Don't Work Here." They collectively state,
If you think the only women who help create this show are a couple of female writers and correspondents, you're dismissing the vast majority of us. Actually, we make up 40% of the staff, and we're not all shoved into the party-planning department (although we do run that, and we throw some kick-ass parties). We are co-executive producers, supervising producers, senior producers, segment producers, coordinating field producers, associate producers, editors, writers, correspondents, talent coordinators, production coordinators, researchers, makeup artists, the entire accounting and audience departments, production assistants, crew members, and much more. We were each hired because of our creative ability, our intelligence, and above all, our ability to work our asses off to make a great show.
In other words, Carmon's efforts to protect female employees actually belittled their work. And as the opening of the letter points out, Carmon doesn't actually work there and yet makes strong accusations about the working climate of the show. These type of assertions shouldn't be made on the word of former employees, but rather, careful research including a large base of people currently employed by the show. As the current employees point out, "to seize on the bitter rantings of ex-employees and ignore what current staff say about working at The Daily Show, it's not fair. It's not fair to us."
Alex Leo at Huffington Post has her own take on the accusations, somehow missing the point of the open letter entirely and focusing solely on how many female writers are on staff. So perhaps it bears repeating, and I say this as a writer. There are a lot of people who work with the writer who are
