Talk Shows

In the modern day and age we have 11 late night talk show hosts ranging from the standard 5 days a week with two personal segments, two guests, and a musical guest to once a week comprehensive study on a big issue in the style of John Oliver.

This photo features the ten main male late night talk show hosts, and there is one extremely important correlation: they're all male. That's creating a near monopoly on male dominance in late night. Recently, as in February of this year, there was an addition to late night to include a woman. Samantha Bee is a veteran of the daily show and knows how to host a show like the one she has now. In her third episode she addressed her situation of being the only female late night television host.

In the video above Samantha Bee shares the importance of having a female voice in late night, but not treating that woman's voice as any different than a man's. Having a solely male perspective on the weekly or daily news is doing a disservice to the large majority of the country that is watching.

In this segment Bee also addresses the importance of having girls that dream big and want to achieve at a young age and encouraging them to reach their full potential. However, her point explored through satire is that the working world is hostile toward women and that messed up work world is not the world she wants to send her daughters into. Using her position as a late night host, with 20 minutes a week (factoring out commercials), she is trying to draw attention to these issues in a way the current late night hosts do not.

Having the least amount of airtime out of any other late night hosts, Bee is changing the climate of late night, but in a way that isn't all about women. The particular clip displayed above relates to women, but most of her show doesn't. It talks about the same issues that the men do, which is admirable. She spins her show in a truly feminist way. A way that is equal for men and women.

Late night TV is still a male dominated world and Sam Bee is the first woman to break that barrier, but hopefully she isn't the last. She is clever and doesn't change herself in anyway to make herself more likable to a male audience. I admire her, and what she is doing with the oppourtunity she has to change the way the world gets their late night news. She pokes fun at her male dominated field with a photo that I will leave you with.

Environmentalism in the Modern World

Today, I live in a world full of meaningful posts on Facebook talking about the presidential campaign or social justice and most ironically, the environment. There's even a page that someone can like called Environmental Quotes & Sayings. Here, the page posts all sorts of inspirational quotes with a pretty background such as this one:

While it's a nice sentiment, what is posting on Facebook doing for the environment? The answer is nothing, actually it's worse than nothing. The computer power used to find and post that photo and the computer power for Facebook to keep their servers up. According to http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html a laptop computer uses 15-60 watts which while fair less than a desktop computer, still requires lots of energy. Rather than actually trying to reduce the amount of energy they use, they post these pictures in order to "spread the word".

Environmentalism in the modern era isn't what it used to be. Earth Day rolls around every April 22nd and yet nothing changes. People still litter, people still plug in their phone and laptop everyday, we still turn on the lights in our house. And while I'm not saying that we should all give up on electricity, that would take humanity back before all the progress made on social justice, but if the amount of global carbon emissions don't decrease we are headed for doomsday sooner rather than later.

According to http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/run-out-of-oil.htm we will run out of oil at some point and it is possible that when we run out we descend into total anarchy or that we create another more sustainable way of producing energy. Windmills and solar panels (see above) are good ways of harvesting energy that is a reality in the near future, but the problem is the expense of building solar panels and windmills and that overhead most people aren't willing to pay. If the government was willing to subsidize renewable energy in the same way they already subsidize oil and corn that dream could be a reality.

Posting a picture on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram does nothing directly to help the environment, and while I recognize the irony in what I'm doing by posting about the environment on my blog, which also requires computer power I hope that someone reads this and votes for a congressman or for the next president that will make the biggest change when it comes to the environment in the upcoming election. I hope that the words on the internet somehow will eventually translate to actual change in the world that I live in.