The Rise of the News Anchorwoman

This weekend the Boston Globe got its panties all in a wad when Suzanne Ryan found out that only 42.8% of news anchors are men. Seems that in the near future, the news will be spoken in alto and treble tones, not the authoritative tenor of Walter Cronkite. Yeah, so what.

But Ryan's article was ridiculously stupid, with quotes like,

"A lot of young men are encouraged to go into law and medicine, engineering and math," says Coleen Marren, WCVB's news director, who has noticed the trend.

Actually, at our conservative-leaning medical school, 55% of the students are women, and men are a minority at our law school across town, too. And we've been told that more engineers than ever are women. Mathematics seems like such a small career field that it can't possibly influence the number of people going into any other field, can it? How many people, men or women, said they wanted to be mathematicians when they were kids? Raise your hands. Thought so.

Another gem:

"In the era of 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' newscasters were macho and fiery. Now they have to be so neutral and unbiased that . . . it doesn't seem manly."

Because as anyone who has ever argued politics with a woman knows, women are tame, unopinionated wet rags. ESPECIALLY the red-headed ones.

Anyway, we could continue mocking this drivel, but Shakespeare's Sister has done a damn fine job already.

We think this is the natural result of more women than men going to college. And we also think that all those women and those few guys sitting at the news desk better be looking for other work, because we don't know anyone who watches the news, anyway. Ooh, look Suzanne, there goes the bigger issue!