Whoo! Benefits good! One might even say they're beneficial!

I'll be able to go to the doctor if I need to! And not pay an exhorbitant amount for new eyeglasses! And I'll have to see if it's at all possible to take a floating holiday on December 26th. That would be nice.

that last panel contains a spoiler of sorts

Well, inasmuch as you can spoil yourself, I guess. It refers to (and clarifies) something we saw onscreen, but there's nothing left to spoil, is there?

It does put certain things in a very different light. I guess it depends on where (if anywhere) they go with that point.

I don't watch that much comedy, but when I do cruise by the shows on TV, my main impression of the women comedians was that on the average they were more grating than the men. I've seen dozens of clueless/sadly untalented/obnoxious male comedians, but the percentage of people I find funny tends to favor men. The common trend with the unentertaining women was their attempts to be "ballsy", which is what I assumed Hutchins meant by "dykey"--a badly named attempt to be more-macho-than-thou.

I can't stand Larry the Cable Guy. I love the other guys on Redneck Comedy Tour. Ellen DeGeneres will make me fall on the ground in tears. On the whole, I'd rather take a chance on watching a male comedian than a female comedian, and mostly for the reasons that Hutchins listed.

Boys try to crack each other up, in my experience, more than girls do.

Maybe this is why people find it odd that I try to be funny? (It's probably that my humor is too obscure for some people.)

I've never really forgiven CH for showing up on TDS drunk off his ass.(If I can tell, bunk, you should be ashamed...it's another place where I'm darless so he probably gave half of Manhattan a contact high.) So his opinion means dick. ETA: And obviously, I'm fucking hilarious. maybe women only laugh at him when he's naked these days.

"Women aren't funny" is an old saw, Hitchens hardly invented it. All his arguments are the same old arguments. (And picking it apart is just too easy -- nobody with any chops does too many fart jokes, for example, they're cheap. its like working blue, it's crap.) Traditionally there have been fewer women in comedy and fewer opportunities for women in comedy -- but why should comedy be different from EVERYTHING else but teaching, nursing, and home making?

And there is fun fun fun dynamic of "pretty".

Being funny often doesn't look pretty and that turns off/ inhibts a lot of women. A good example is Lily Tomlin: I've met her in person, she is one of the most physically lovely women I have ever met. You do not get this impression from her work because comic is a higher priority to her than looking nice. Its a choice she made long ago and embraced and it has paid off for her (as opposed to many women performers who opted to play the safer pretty card). She rocks. Of course, she is a dyke.

There is also the element of casting men because they're funny (which makes them look good or at least appealing) and women because they look good (and then expecting them to be funny). Guess who ends up funnier? I think its less of a problem than it used to be. SNL stopped doing it, comedy troupes in general seem to have gotten over it.

Its all starting to fade though... the more women are in the mix the less of a novelty they become. The less of a novelty, the less requisite that "The Girl" be a looker. There are still fewer women comedy writers and its frustrating, but its continuing to shift and likely won't be so unbalanced for much longer.

No, he didn't invent it...I just like to talk about how Christopher Hitchens is a prat, is all. It's obvious he was smart once, but...

but now he's a prat. sighhhhh

Lily Tomlin's gay?

Huh.