I am always highly, highly suspicious when I see someone ~age 25 be an "expert" at something complex like policy. I've worked in policy analysis for 10 years, am getting my masters, and have publications under my belt - and I know I'm still a newb.

oh, let me guess, you're probably a believer in the homo oeconomicus, the rational agent who's only striving to maximize his personal utility? Cute. (For the record, the "mostly focussed on personal benefits"-thing is something I can buy into, but "rational" is generally a bit of a myth.)

Talking about comfortable narratives.... because "Institutionalized sexism? Nah, women just aren't that funny" isn't convenient at all..... Don't you know, male doctors/comedians/whatever could have no possible self-serving motivation to keep out female competition; balls are apparently a guarantee of objectivity and…

But what if you are happy, and black women have created their own shows and places to perform, and yet you still want to correct a falsehood that a very privileged media person (Michaels, not Thompson) is putting out in order to cover his own laziness and lack of interest in women of color? The fact that Retta rocks…

Exactly.

I used to work at a theater that SNL recruits heavily from — it is 100% invite only. First you have to be invited by the theater owner to participate in the "showcase" show that Lorne & co. will be watching to select auditionees from. Then a handful of people (sometimes zero, sometimes four or five or maybe more, i…

This person has been trolling several threads today. Dismiss, dismiss, dismiss.

Here's the thing, though: inclusivity takes work. Which is why integration hasn't just happened magically and effortlessly since the civil rights era. Otherwise we'd have perfect proportional representation pretty much across the board. Racism is built-in, and it takes active anti-racist effort (there's no such thing…

How about the fact that SNL is not funny. How about the fact that it is lame and not innovative at all. They average 1 - 2 skits per show that are actually funny (and sometimes they fail to achieve even that). Maybe updating their audition process and diversifying their pool of talent would do them some good.

I'm not a sketch comedy expert, so I can't answer that question. I mean, you can easily google some of the names thrown out there. However, Jay Pharoah is not only a sketch comedian, but he's a comedian on SNL. If he believes there are people out there who SNL is not considering, well that is saying something. …

Rather be precious than racist. Thanks!

Jay Pharoah, a black cast member, has stated that SNL has not followed through with diversifying the cast as promised. I don't know all the details of that commitment from SNL, but it leads me to suspect that SNL is way off base. Particularly for a cast member to call them out on it.

Oh, so you can't answer the actual question posed to you that completely repudiated your initial original post? Instead, you just attempt to mislead this issue by picking just the first half of a quote, the second half of which stated, "...she's really talented. She's amazing. She needs to be on SNL. I said it. …

So, how do you explain Jay Pharoah, a black man also in the cast, who flat out says there are enough black women who are ready to perform "at that level"?

I remember when male doctors used to say there weren't any qualified female doctors. It is possible to be on the inside and still see it all wrong.

Whaaaat? Ok. I can't even tell the new cast members apart. They hired 5 different versions of the same guy, plus a female equivalent.

I thought it would be obvious I was talking about my own experience and not all men. From the wording "I love it when..." Unless you think I've met and interacted with all men on earth, or decide I meant every single men I've talked to ever. None of those is true, for the record.

This really is the entire issue, though. A huge number of men still believe women are a different "species" that they'll never understand, femininity being so foreign and odd and something impossible to relate to, apparently. In my experience, this attitude can be passed down from fathers to sons — my father never…

And aren't some of these hilarious cliches about themselves? As if men never talk to friends about their sex lives (real or imagined)? Hello? Anyone remember high school? And bad movies? There have certainly been quite a few fortunes made marketing dumb movies with explosions and car chases to men. And the size…

I don't know why the idea that women are people and therefore each one is different seems to be so hard to grasp for some dudes. I just love it when men inevitably start a conversation by referencing a hilarious cliche about how women are and what we like. Thanks for defining me around trite stereotypes of my sex! I…