Recently Conan O’Brien got pegged to replace Jay Leno in five years as host of the Tonight Show . Made me wonder if any females have been successful at carrying the late talk format so I looked it up. I found this article about Ali Wentworth from Ali & Jack getting a gig to do her own late show but then it was canned. Here’s what the writer had to say:

Ali Wentworth, star of stage and screen, walks out from behind a curtain as America ‘s first-ever female host of her own late-night talk show, this one on ABC following Nightline . What woman wouldn’t want to be Ali at this moment? Funny. Beautiful. Says what she wants. Shoots from the hip. Rebellious and girl-next-door. A sexy, intelligent chick who can counter-balance the Daves and the Jays and give women a kindred spirit to tune into and look up to as they wind down from their stress-filled days.

This is what we need, sighs ladies from coast to coast, finally, one of our own on top.

What the fuck? This is the typical Eurocentric perspective of the mainstream media. That everything that is good and pleasant for whites, blacks undoubtedly will appreciate too. What a load of bullshit? “One of our own?” I have never felt…not necessarily “equal to”…that’s not the right term. I guess it’s more like I’ve just never felt like a kindred spirit with any white woman. I just know too much about racial issues in this country and the automatic advantage many white women have by birthright. A false and bloodily claimed birthright but a birthright in America nonetheless.

Skin privilege or whatever we call it now.

Articles like this remind me of that HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels, about women’s suffrage, another historically lauded movement which made heroines out of more white women. White women who would command armies of black women while holding meetings about *women’s rights*. Fuck them and that movie.

Is it that, psychologically America can’t stand the idea of coming home to a black women as a late night host? I don’t know, it’s just really something to consider. Also, white firsts are no longer very exciting to me, seeing that many of them only came about because blacks and other ethnic groups were shut put of the competition. Of course you’ll win if you’re the only one in the race.

Ali wouldn’t have been the first female late show host either. Other than being a typically Eurocentric writer, the author of that article Linda Sivertsen was wrong. Joan Rivers was actually the first woman to have a late night talk show.