Sarah Silverman
The New York Times has female trouble
Katie Roiphe defends risque jokes at work, but then an arts story wonders if women comics are going too far
Sarah Silverman The New York Times thinks naughty ladies are just da bomb. People still say “da bomb,” right? That’s a thing? On Sunday, the Paper of Record gave Katie Roiphe free rein to gas on “in favor of dirty jokes and risqué remarks,” which, to her mind, are what those whiny girls are complaining about when they’re being sexually harassed. “Show me a smart, competent young professional woman who is utterly derailed by a verbal unwanted sexual advance or an inappropriate comment about her appearance,” she wrote, between boasts about her Princeton pedigree, “and I will show you a rare spotted owl.” Show me evidence Katie Roiphe has ever held a real job, and I will eat a rare spotted owl.
Not willing to let any grass grow under its zeitgeisty, metaphoric feet, today the Times notices “Female Comedians, Breaking the Taste-Taboo Ceiling.” Have you heard of this Sarah Silverman person? Because apparently she is rather raunchy. And lest you find yourself wondering how you woke up in 1998, and if so, whether Dawson’s ever going to hook up with Joey, let me assure you, this story actually ran in the New York Times in November 2011. Coming next, a piece on how people are using emoticons. Oh, wait.
In the first four paragraphs of his piece on taboo-busting babes, Jason Zinoman opens with a 1979 quote from Johnny Carson, segues into a 2007 Vanity Fair piece by Christopher Hitchens, and lands with a flourish on a decade-old Sarah Silverman joke. As those saucy lady comics might say, this story is dustier than your grandmother’s vagina.
After bringing us up to speed on Silverman’s latest rape jokes, what do you think Zinoman covered next? That’s right, Whitney Cummings, “another coarse, sexually frank female stand-up comic.” Despite also doing rape jokes, Zinoman finds her “not particularly risky.”
Cummings, like Silverman, is both attractive and comfortable around the F-bomb — and a reliable marvel to the Times. Just two months ago, Andrew Goldman was asking her about being “objectively attractive,” what she wears to meetings, and whether she slept her way to fame and is “too dumb to own a car.” It was hilarious.
You’d think the next place to go from here would be Chelsea Handler. Last spring, after all, the Times lovingly noted that “her body has the pre-silicone lushness of a ’60s Playmate” while cooing that she admits, “I try to make fun of everyone as often as possible, especially minorities.” But shockingly – shocking like a rape joke involving a black guy shocking – the Times veers to Amy Schumer. Schumer, who is not Chelsea Handler, is “blond and bubbly” with “wholesome, apple-cheeked cheer,” and an act that “spouts proudly prejudiced views, mean-girl put-downs and meticulously recounted sexual exploits.” See, it’s completely different.
I’m just a cotton-headed set of ovaries on two feet, but I can’t help noticing a recurring theme. Whether it’s coming from Katie Roiphe or a culture writer, there’s a weird mix of fascination and repugnance toward the gal with a seemingly manly swagger here. She’s so cool, she can even laugh off sexual assault. Why can’t more women be like her? And she gets to say that stuff about vaginas that other people can’t. You know, like Jay-Z can say the N-word and gay men can call each other queer. Imagine the freedom! She’s also hot. Who else feels a 1,200 word think piece coming on?
It’s not that certain female comics don’t perpetuate this attention-getting shtick — if I never hear Sarah Silverman deliver an abortion punch line in that baby-talk monotone again, it’ll be too soon. But the bangable-broad-with-a-potty-mouth story is approximately as relevant as the moms-sometimes-wear-nice-clothes-outside one. What’s amazing isn’t that a woman can cuss with her pretty little lipsticked mouth. It’s that this jive-ass story is still being written, 10 years after it was vaguely topical. It’s the astonishment that Johnny Carson’s 1979 opinions no longer hold quite so much sway, and that sometimes people who can grow babies in their tummies can curse and talk about their periods or your erections. Guess the cat’s out of the bag on that one. So congratulations to the Times on something truly original there. They’ve made the notion of breaking taboos utterly boring.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Sarah Silverman meets the Serenading Unicorn
Is this melodic horned horse the best viral marketing since the Old Spice Guy? We think so
Sarah has finally moved on. The best job in the world must be being Sarah Silverman’s boyfriend. Well, unless you are Jimmy Kimmel, in which case I guess hosting your own late night show and f*cking Ben Affleck is more spiritually rewarding.
But don’t worry, Sarah, there’s a new player in town who wants to wine and dine you, and that’s the Serenading Unicorn.
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Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant.
Inside TED
At the ultra-cool "ideas" conference, there's no recession, Sarah Silverman is tame and all we need is "mind shift"
Sarah Silverman arrives at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) (Credit: Chris Pizzello) A perfect breeze wafts through the outdoor plaza of the four-star Riviera Resort in Palm Springs, Calif., site of this year’s TEDActive conference, the slightly less expensive, and less exclusive, overflow conference of the annual TED conference, held in Long Beach. Friend and colleague Andy Bichlbaum and I are sitting with a crowd in an outdoor Jacuzzi, reveling in the balmy weather after having just barely escaped the blizzard on the East Coast. This being a conference devoted to “Ideas worth spreading,” we’ve been invited to give a talk here about the work of the mischief-making, left-leaning activist collective known as the Yes Men, best known for constructing elaborate pranks, impersonations and hacks of major corporations and powerful government bodies. Andy is one of the co-founders, and I’ve been working with the group on and off in various capacities for a year and change.
Continue Reading CloseJoseph Huff-Hannon is a Brooklyn-based independent writer and producer, a 2008 finalist in the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a recipient of a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. See more of his work at josephhuffhannon.com. More Joseph Huff-Hannon.
Women ARE funny. And foxy!
Vanity Fair spotlights Tina Fey and other female comedians, and the question isn't "Why aren't women funny?" but "Why are today's funny women all so hot?"
Back in January 2007, when Vanity Fair published Christopher Hitchens’ irritating “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” clearly written in the depths of a Bushmills bender, the funny (ha!) thing was that female comedians were actually doing better than ever: Tina Fey was starring in the best sitcom on television after a winning tenure at “Saturday Night Live,” Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph were kicking ass on that show, Sarah Silverman had been the subject of a fawning New Yorker profile and was about to launch her own comedy show, etc. So it was puzzling why Hitch chose that moment to publicly perform his own verbal wedgie. Maybe it was a slow month.
Continue Reading CloseSarah Hepola is an editor at Salon. More Sarah Hepola.
I Like to Watch
Sarah Silverman fans, cheesy housewives and goo-covered clairvoyants agree: Disappointment awaits the already disappointed among us!
When you smile, the world smiles back at you. Likewise, when you frown or grimace or roll your eyes, the world gives you the finger and tells you to go frack yourself.
And when you use the word “frack” too often in your column, the world shoves your own geeky reference in your face by putting it into Summer’s dialogue on “The OC.” And when you insult “The OC,” the world makes “The OC” more interesting by getting rid of Mischa Barton and giving neurotic overachiever Taylor a leading role. Then, just when you’re beginning to like the new “OC,” with its fake French lovers and fake French talk shows (Je Pense!) and its careless, pregnant middle-aged moms, the world cancels “The OC” and blames it all on you for not championing it through the hard times (i.e., the last three seasons).
Continue Reading CloseHeather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic and author of the rabbit blog. Her memoir, "Disaster Preparedness," published in 2010. More Heather Havrilesky.
The Fix
Boston pranksters meet the press. The "Chapter 27" boycott chorus. Plus: The Harry Potter help line.
Morning Briefing:
Pranksters’ press conference: The two guys at the center of a marketing scheme that caused a terrorism scare in Boston this week pleaded not guilty and posted bail yesterday. And Turner Broadcasting, which hired the firm that hired the two men who distributed Lite-Brite-like boxes around town, has agreed to reimburse the city for the cost of its emergency response efforts. It would have been a kind of ho-hum ending to the bizarre incident, but then came the press conference performance artists Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, gave after their release, in which they said they wanted to talk about “haircuts in the ’70s and how they affect our lives today and how we live in the future,” and then refused to answer any press questions that didn’t have to do with hair. As NPR notes, “The journalists present were not amused.” You can watch the press conference via YouTube here. (New York Times, NPR, YouTube)
Scott Lamb is a senior editor at BuzzFeed.com. More Scott Lamb.
Page 1 of 2 in Sarah Silverman
Silverman’s character could take a few pointers from Tina Fey on “30 Rock” (You’re watching it now, right?): an awkward, vaguely pathetic character who manages not to be unbearably smug and cloying in a way that makes you want to punch her in the face. With all of the potential here — the fantasy sequences, the extreme weirdness, the desire to offend — Silverman should manage to make us laugh more often. I’m going to give this one a 3 on the