Joan Ryan: TV's political talk shows shun women

[swimmernsecretsea]

A million years ago when I first became a sports columnist, some of the sportswriters at the Florida newspaper where I worked took me out for a beer. They were well-meaning guys trying to help a 24-year-old woman who had no clue what she was getting herself into.

Don't be a "female" columnist, they said. You won't be taken seriously. Grateful, I mimicked their writing styles for months until one day, the obvious flaw in their advice hit me. I was female. I was a sports columnist. I had no choice but to be a female sports columnist.

More important, I came to understand why female voices on the sports pages were valuable. It's not that women write differently from men. What's different is their choice of topics and the lens through which they view them. Domestic violence, inequities in athletic scholarships and resources, sexual orientation -- all were pulled from the shadows of sports when women began showing up in stadium press boxes.

So when a study released Tuesday revealed that just 14 percent of the guests on the influential Sunday morning political talk shows are women, and that 56 percent of the episodes included no women at all, I wondered if anyone was surprised. I wasn't. One need only listen to the weekly interviews and discussions -- the dearth of ideas, the ponderous iteration of solutions that haven't worked, the recycled assumptions that rattle inside the beltway like a shoe in a dryer -- to know that women aren't at the table.

Link to complete article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/13/BAG00F7MDM1.DTL

[Erika]

1. Sandra Day O'Conner was very wise in saying

affirmative actions programs would be needed for another quarter of a century. It is still the old boy white system who calls the shots.

[Kurovski]

2. What about Ann Coulter?

Oh. Never mind.

[swimmernsecretsea]

4. Uh-oh

You invoked the name of the beast. It has awakened and searches for a victim...brrrrr

[pop goes the weasel]

3. worst offender

Wall Street Journal Editorial Report, which doesn't even bother to bring in a token, pre-screened woman to nod her head in vigorous agreement when the old fat white men weigh in on women's issues.

My favorite Sunday talk show is To the Contrary, which is informative and actually exposes the viewer to a wide variety of (women's) viewpoints. The guests even listen to one another and sometimes even change their minds to some extent due to the conversation. The male-dominated shows could learn a thing or two about civic engagement from To the Contrary.