Peter Sagal is alright with me.
I’m a fan of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! (although as I could not be sure that Peter, Carl, and the panelists would limit their interaction with Maureen Dowd to demanding that she STFU, I did skip her Not My Job segment a couple of weeks ago) even though sometimes I think they go for the cheap, and occasionally sexist, laugh. But after seeing a link on Feministe to Sagal’s All Thing’s Considered commentary Gender Inequity in ‘Whoville,’ I find that I love Peter Sagal almost as much as I hate Jim Carey.
Wait, that is impossible. My hatred of Jim Carey is unparalleled. But I do find myself feeling happier, warmer, fuzzier feelings towards Mr. Sagal than I ever have before. Read a wee bit for yourself:
In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I’ll wait.
No I won’t. What’s so irritating about this casual slap at daughters is the sense that the makers of the film didn’t really mean it. They seemed mostly interested in riffs on pop culture and jokes about violating bodily integrity. But what writers are told, you see, in Hollywood notes meetings, is that every character has to make a journey, towards something he needs and ultimately gets, and what they decided the Mayor of Whoville needs was a better relationship with his son. Here is a father with 96 daughters — 96 amazing, beautiful, unpredictable, mysterious, distinct, glorious human beings — but gosh, what in the world is he going to care about? I know, let’s give him a moody silent uninteresting offspring, but this one’s got a Y chromosome… that’ll be boffo box office!
Huggles!
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April 3, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Paul
That is indeed full of win. (I’d like to hijack this post for a moment and say I’d love Sagal more if he got Amy Dickenson off the show’s panel, forever. NOW.)
April 3, 2008 at 2:40 pm
OTM
Is she the one who gave the fat hating husband the terrible advice about his wife? Or do you just dislike her on the show? I kind of live for Mo Rocca and Paula Poundstone. And Tom Bodet. And Roy Blunt, Jr. And Adam Felber. And that other guy who isn’t Adam Felber but whose name I can never remember.
PJ pissed me off during the Maureen Dowd episode when he made some nasty ablist comments about Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, but he’s a conservative so he pisses me off anyway.
April 3, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Tari
Wowzers. I’ve never heard WWDTM (not a radio listener since I ditched my car), but that piece is awesome. Maybe I should make a point to listen or something.
April 3, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Paul
Amy Dickenson is NOT funny. At all. Ever. Worse, she often laughs at her own jokes. And! She’s not funny. Plus… she’s not funny.
Can’t vouch for the anti-fat advice columns though it wouldn’t surprise me one iota if there was one, or thirty. They too would not be funny.
April 3, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Paul
Oh and Tari? Podcast!
May 2, 2008 at 12:33 am
spacedcowgirl
I am way late finding this (it only just yesterday occurred to me that I could get what you wacky kids call a “feed reader” and actually keep up on posts in the fatosphere), but THANK YOU for posting it. I love Peter Sagal too–and they always play trailers for WWDTM right around the time they play ones for “What Do You Know?” which causes me to find Michael Feldman even more annoying by contrast to Sagal. I’m not sure what it is about Feldman, but he bugs the crap out of me. In any case, I was not aware Sagal had a web site, so again, thank you and thanks for the tipoff on the Whoville piece!
May 2, 2008 at 6:00 am
OTM
I used to listen to “What Do You Know?” because it came on before or after WWDTM until one day I realized, “OMG I hate this show!”
Feed readers saved my life.