… and the internet exploded.
No really, I think it did. Well for me it did, quite literally. I had no internet at my home last night for many hours (I liketa died) and for some reason the email I use for work and entertainment news was not loading anywhere, even on my phone. When it finally came back, the first thing that popped up was this:
I would attempt to save face here, but it would be difficult because my reaction to that news was on par with the Cardinals winning the World Series (again) and the Crimson Tide the National Championship (again) on the same day.
Why is this such a big deal? Well besides just being a fan in general of these two women, it’s sort of a big deal when it comes to the whole “girls can do it to” thing. Women sort of get a bad rap in Hollywood. How many times have we heard “women aren’t funny”? Hell it was just this summer that Adam Corolla created quite the dust up when in an interview he said that women aren’t as funny as men. Sadly, he is not alone in his opinion. Even sadder, it’s an opinion that has stood the test of time. Really for no good reason.
Women are funny. Let me amend that- funny women are funny, just like funny men are funny. We are incredibly funny. We can write funny, we can play funny and right now there is a plethora of funny women out there doing just that. Not only do Tina Fey and Amy Poehler star in their own shows (30 Rock and Parks and Recreation respectively- two shows that you should be watching if you aren’t already) but they also write,produce, and in Poehler’s case, direct these shows. These are not two little girls trying to sit at the big kids table, these are women. Women who could probably kick your ass in the “let’s compare career success” arena.
Even if women in general weren’t funny, surely they can stand in front of an awards ceremony and deliver lines written by a funny man, right? If one were to base their answer on the history of Academy Awards hosts (I could not for the life of me find a list of previous Golden Globes hosts), the answer unfortunately would be a resounding, NO! For the first 65 years of the Oscars ceremony, there were 14 women co-hosts, starting with Agnes Morehead in 1948, the 20th Annual Academy Awards. It wasn’t until 1994 that a women was permitted to stand on stage and host on her own when Whoopi Goldberg hosted. She must have done something right because she then went on to host another three times (1996, 1999, and 2002).
So yes, this is very exciting news for fans and it will probably lead to an awards show with a bit more of a self-deprecating tone rather than Seth MacFarlane’s crude style of humor; but in the long run there is a good chance that 40 years from now women might be looking at Wikipedia and seeing the story of the 70th Annual Golden Globes as a history maker.
Here’s the point of it all; humor is like ice cream. Everyone has their favorite flavor. Yours might be strawberry, mine might be butter pecan (that’s a lie, it’s mint chocolate chip) and that’s okay. No matter what your favorite flavor is, it shouldn’t matter who is standing behind the counter, dishing it up.
The 70th Annual Golden Globes will air on Sunday, January 13, 2013 on NBC.