That’s funny

Kathy Griffin has criticised the lack of women on Forbes magazine’s latest list of the world’s best-paid comedians.

The Emmy Award-winning comedian tweeted the top 10 of Forbes’ list along with the words: “No Women.”

Here’s the list;

She’s quite accurate in her observation; none of the 10 highest earning comedians in 2018 were women (or even, to comply with the modern parlance, “men with vaginas“).

The responses to her tweet were quite amusing and seem to fall into two distinct camps;

1. This is outrageous and damning proof of an oppressive patriarchy operating in the comedy industry, or

2. It’s a list of the comedians people choose to spend their own money on, the ten most competent comedians active in 2018, in other words, you unfunny and stupid woman.

Only one of those world views can be correct.

Bill’s Opinion

Comedy is a brutal job to choose. Nobody makes it to the top of the tree without learning their craft through thousands of hours of effort, failure, perseverance and continuous improvement.

During that time, your pay very closely matches your success rate at making people laugh. It’s a reasonably efficient market, in other words.

There is another interesting distinguishing factor between the comedians on the list above and many of the names suggested by the nutters in the “its duh patriarchy” camp, such as Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Lesley Jones, and Sarah Silverman; their recent material has deprioritised the comedic quality of their work in favour of attacking Trump supporters or men. That’s their choice but they perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that men and Trump supporters don’t choose to pay money for that type of act.

But, yes; “no funny women”, eh, Kathy;