Daily Show Co-Creator on Comedy's Gender Gap
Rachel Sklar sits down with Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead and asks a tough question: Why aren’t there more women writers in comedy?
On this episode of The Daily Beast's video series Have a Drink With..., Rachel Sklar sits down with Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead. The topic: the dearth of women working behind the scenes on shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show.
Winstead says that when she was originally staffing The Daily Show, only three of the 150 writer submissions were from women, and none of those three women had the chops to write for the show.
But Winstead counters Christopher Hitchens’ provocative claim that women aren’t funny. “I’m funny, so he’s wrong. By being funny, his whole theory is disproved.”
Rachel Sklar is the editor at large for Mediaite.com and a contributor to The Daily Beast. She was formerly a senior writer and editor at the Huffington Post and is working on Jew-ish , a humorous book about cultural identity. She recently launched online micro-giving site Charitini, and Twitters up a storm here.
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