In 2006, the late Christopher Hitchens published an essay
called
"Why Women Aren't Funny." In
it he proclaimed that most females—"bless their tender hearts"—lack
the humor gene.
Harrumph, answers Joy Press's rollicking ode
to the visionaries who saw an absence of stories like theirs on TV and set out
to fill the void.
Stealing the Show honors these
small-screen shatterers—Diane English, Shonda Rhimes, Roseanne Barr, Tina Fey,
Amy Schumer, Jenji Kohan, Jill Soloway, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham among
them—who've collectively reshaped television and its treatment of women. Here
we learn that it was Amy Poehler who persuaded a reluctant Fey to play the lead
in
30 Rock, reminding her it wouldn't have occurred
to Jerry Seinfeld or Ray Romano that they weren't "good enough to star in
a network show"; that the
Gilmore Girls spoke with such
fast-talking confidence, many suspected the writer was actually Aaron Sorkin;
that the true calling heeded by
Broad City's Abbi
Jacobson and Ilana Glazer was to create woman characters who are "unpolished
and fart." Now,
that's funny.
