Look, it's the face of sexism herself.
Oh, how we loathe the so-called Fresh Air. A boring hour of radio where Terry Gross plays at vocal dominitrix in her sexualized manner. We hate the show. We've previously tackled Terry Gross' rampant sexism in "Terry Gross Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)" and "Terry Gross Still Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)." Last week, one of us (Ann) wrote "Riverdaughter, act like a feminist already" because The Confluence, supposed to be a feminist site, was offering praise for the sexist pig Terry Gross.
Terry Gross is a queen bee. That's all she is, that's all she ever will be. We've documented it at length. But you shouldn't need us to point that out if you listen to Gross' bad show. If you're a feminist, you should quickly grasp how few women Terry finds time for -- you should grasp that all on your own.
In April, Alicia Shephard -- NPR ombudsperson -- wrote a column bemoaning that only 26% of NPR's newsources were women. Now anything less than 50% would be a horrible number based on US population figures. But, as we shared with Alicia months ago, Terry Gross can even make it to 26%. The response was that Terry's not NPR. Yes, she is. NPR copyrights her show. Do not give us that nonsense ever again, a copyright is a copyright -- something Gertrude Stein would've grasped if NPR's ombudsperson can't. [Two of us addressed the Fresh Air and NPR issue in "Of stupidity and NPR (Ava and C.I.)."]
But Alicia was bothered by 26% for women as new sources. How many women does she think Terry Gross books?
We hadn't done the numbers on Fresh Air since May (Ann covers it at her site daily). We had a lot to cover. Ty passed on feedback regarding the numbers. The big change? You felt that if an interview aired, it aired. You weren't concerned with rebroadcasts or whether the person was alive or dead. We have followed your wishes on that and Ann will follow that at her site starting Monday.
26% was alarming to Alicia.
164 guests were what we counted from June through last Friday. How many were men, how many were women?
28 were women.
136 were men.
Only 20.588235% of Terry's guests were women. (As always, check our math.)
20.58% is less than 26% so where's Alicia's column on this?
Again, NPR copyrights Terry's program. It airs on NPR stations. NPR ombudsperson -- past and present -- have felt free to weigh in on Terry's show -- that includes Alicia. So exactly when can we expect Alicia Shepherd to call out the sexism?
Ann calls out every broadcast. And, thing is, it shouldn't take Ann, it shouldn't take any of us. Just listening, if you're a functioning human being, you should be able to notice when 136 guests out of a total of 164 guests are men. That shouldn't require highlighting or pointing out.
Terry Gross doesn't deserve any praise. She deserves to be called out.
Monthly guests and numbers follow.
June 1st featured one male (Dennis Hopper), June 2nd two women (Samantha Bee and Laura Poitras), June 3rd was John Waters, June 4th was one woman (Ayelet Waldman) and one man (Paul McCartney), June 7th was Gary Rivlin, June 8th was Linda Greenlaw and Michael Hiltzick, June 9th was Joan Rivers, June 10th was Abram Lustgarten and Josh Fox, June 11th was Sean Hayes, Hal David and Burt Bacharach, June 14th was Terry cutting off Jackie DeShannon repeatedly, June 15th a man from Newsweek, June 16th was Marisa Tomei, Debra Granik and Daniel Woodrell, June 17th was Mark Moffett, June 18th was Griffin Dunne, June 21st was James Murphy, June 22nd was Lawrence Wright, June 23rd was S.C. Gwynne (male) and Connie Britton, June 24th was Henry Fountain, June 25th was Michael Chabon and Dan Gottlieb, June 28th was Linda Greenhouse and Robert Byrd, June 29th was Frank Loesser and June 30th was Michael Klare and Doug Inkley. That's 24 men, 10 women.
July 1st was Jeffrey Gettleman, July 2nd was W.S. Merwin (male) and Stephen King, July 5rd omitted (Terry chooses not to archive this episode it's kicked out of our count -- it was a repeat of the March 1st program), July 6th was Billy Collins and Lyndall Gordon, July 7th was Louise C.K., July 8th was Lisa Cholodenko and Joel Achenbach, July 9th was Tom Ford and Colin Firth, July 12th was Robert Wittman, July 13th was Daniel Carlat, July 14th was Phil Shenon, July 15th was Billy West and Peter Laufer, July 16th was Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, July 19th was Paul Greenberg, July 20th was Sonia Shah and Philip Furia, July 21st was Binyamin Appelbaum, July 22nd was Robert Duvall, July 23rd was Jimmy Webb and Jared Harris, July 26th was Matthew Weiner, July 27th was Mark Mazzetti, July 28th was Richard Cizik, July 29th was Atul Gawande, Jay Roach and Steve Carell and July 30th was Daniel Schorr. That's
27 men 4 women.
August 2nd was Gary Shteyngart, August 3rd was Brian May, August 4th was AC Thompson (male) and Fred Hersch, August 5th was Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and David Mitchell, August 6th was Rafael Yglesias, August 9th was Jonathan Eig, August 10th was Todd S. Purdum, August 11th was Ed Kohn and Tony Judt, August 12th was Michael Capuzzo and Peter Maass, August 13th was Siskel and Ebert, August 16th was Susan R. Barry, August 17th was Sue Diaz and Abbey Lincoln, August 18th was Natasha Tretheway, August 19th was Julia Angwin, August 20th was John Mellencamp, August 23nd was Scott Simon and Jack Clark, August 24th was Matt Richtel, August 25th was Eliza Griswald and Jeff Sharlet, August 26th was trivia queen Jane Mayer, August 27th was Andre Aggassi, August 30th was Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Charlie Haden and August 31st was Merle Haggard and George Jones. That's 26 men, 7 women.
September 1st was Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, September 2nd was John Doe, Ricky Scaggs and Charlie Louvin, September 3rd was Doc Watson and a musical group (2 men, 1 woman), September 6th was Dolly Parton and Charlie Rich, September 7th was Lawrence Wright, September 8th was Michael Potter and Robert Schimmel, September 9th was Jonathan Franzen, September 10th was Timothy Egan and Hal Holbrook, September 13th was Jennifer Ackerman and Isabel Wilkerson, September 14th was Stephen Breyer, September 15th was Scott Spencer and Jeffrey Gordon, September 16th was Jon Hamm and Edwin Newman, September 17th was Theo Bleckmann, September 20th was Jim Gorant, September 21st was David Rakoff, September 22nd was Anthony Shadid, September 23rd was Jeff Sharlet and a male film director, September 24th was Tim Page and Nick Hornby, September 27th was Gary Noesner, September 28th was Terence Winter, September 29th was Robert Reich and Zach Galifianakis and September 30th was Mark Feldstein. That's 33 men, 4 women.
October 1st was Arthur Penn and Tony Curtis, October 2nd was Jon Stewart, October 5th was James Franco, October 6th was Justin Timberlake, October 7th was Peter Stone, Ken Vogel and Lee Fang (all men), October 8th was Paul McCartney, Cynthia Lennon, Ringo Starr and Mark Wiener, October 11th was Eric Foner, October 12th was CJ Chivers (male), October 13th was Sean Wilentz, October 14th was Philip Roth and a male musician, October 15th was David Bianculli, October 18th was a male comic who wrote a book, October 19th was a male director and a male screenwriter, October 20th was Jason Schwartzman, October 21st was Harold McGree, October 22nd was Jon Stewart again (for over 45 minutes), October 25th was Keith Richards, October 26th was Oliver Sacks, October 27th was Gretchen Morgenson, October 28th was Stephen Sondheim and October 29th was Patti Smith (rebroadcast from January). That's
26 men, 3 women.