So, Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy have been kicked to the curb by "The View." While I'm sure members of the Vaccines are Evil Unless Barbara Walters Is Listening fan club and The Earth Is Totally Not Round, Dammit Meetup.com group are likely incensed, I doubt the rest of America is broken up about the change.
    Now, the question turns to who will replace these two dimmest of bulbs on the panel. It seems many a pundit thinks it would be wildly edgy for at least one of the replacement panelists to be a man. To be clear, this isn't an edgy idea. It isn't even a good one, and here's why.
    I remember many years ago when Jimmy Fallon left "Saturday Night Live." Tina Fey was flying solo at the news desk, so the question being bantered around by the men in my office (all of them TV and movie critics) was who would replace Fallon.
    Not once was a female name mentioned. Every other man on the cast, plus previous cast members and unrelated male comedians, was suggested as a possibility. Of course, we all know that Lorne Michaels was more evolved than my co-workers, and Amy Poehler took over the open seat. But this experience was eye-opening, at least for me.
    Yes, "The View" appeals to a largely female audience, but when Barbara Walters created the show, it was actually seen as revolutionary to leave men off the panel. At the time, there were usually two or more talking heads sitting at the head of any morning chat show -- and, at minimum, one was always male. This was before Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford, before "The Talk," before any acknowledgment that women didn't need a man in the mix to justify their existence on television. It didn't matter that most of the audience was female -- there always had to be room for a guy at the table.
    The idea that a show that paved the way for all-female chat shows would toss out that core premise -- that women could do it all on their own, could seriously debate politics without bursting into tears, could be funny instead of catty, could care passionately about topics beyond soap operas and lipstick (though they could care a little about those, too) -- is heartbreaking.
    Maybe it speaks to how far we've come -- to stand out in the crowd, the show must open the door to the men as more than guest co-hosts. I would argue that men don't need the boost, either in front of the camera or behind it.  According to "The Hollywood Reporter," as recently as 2011 only 16 percent of all the "important" behind-the-scenes jobs were held by women.
    And, despite all the ladies in daytime, it's not as if men are absent. While there is "The Talk," there is also the predominantly male "The Chew." Matt Lauer still helms the first part of "Today," leaving the last hour of the show to Hoda, Kathie Lee and their booze. While Kelly Ripa should be the big kahuna on "LIVE with Kelly and Michael," everyone is seemingly far more excited about Michael Strahan (who recently took a gig on "GMA").  No one needs to cry a bucket of tears for the fellas.
    Barbara Walters had it right the first time -- and to cede that ground is to overlook the real reasons for crumbling ratings. The show is aging, it's a crowded marketplace, and the combination of Sherri and Jenny brought down the level of dialogue. I never thought I'd be sorry that Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Joy Behar are gone, but they're far sharper than the two dim bulbs who took their chairs.
    This is not a problem that has to be (or even can be) fixed by a man. To imply testosterone is a cure-all for what ails "The View" is to diminish what the show has accomplished. Put on your thinking caps, ABC, but don't go "edgy" or whatever else anyone is calling it. The women you want are out there -- and they are, in fact, women.

COPYRIGHT 2014  - PROVERBIAL THEY. Steal and suffer the consequences.

Yes, the movie has been out for so long that it's almost out of theaters and on Netflix at this point. But PT has not been impressed with the discourse about the movie, which is mostly because the vast majority of movie critics have penises. Yes, there are female movie critics. Some of them even gave this movie insightful, smart and pointed reviews. It was just hard to focus on those with all the bearish braying and stomping around from the men folk.

To wit, critics have been deeply, deeply offended by (spoiler alert, I guess, but if you were going to see it you would have by now) Maleficent getting her wings clipped. It was genital mutilation! Or rape! Or something! It was a violation of the happy, family-friendly HISTORY OF FAIRY TALES TENDING TO BE ABOUT RAPING AND KILLING PEOPLE.

What, you didn't notice? Yeah, if you read those Grimm's fairy tales, there was a lot of killing, and Little Red Riding Hood? The wolf was a different kind of hungry. And I think the woodsman cut the wolf in half with an ax or something.

No, the real affront here wasn't that the de-winging was a euphemism for sexual assault. What male movie critics largely danced around was that this was a studio movie that sent the message men don't matter. Sometimes they're sidekicks, or just meant to look pretty. How deeply offensive!

Of course, no one wanted to point out how unnerving it was to view the world the way almost every woman who has sat through a superhero movie has already seen it umpteen times. So, the focus was on the fact that "Frozen" covered the same turf but was a better film (no argument there), that the tone was all over the place (true) and the film's reliance on narration suggested a hacked-up script and poor direction. PT is not going to go to bat for "Maleficent" being a great film. It isn't. What it is, though, is a flawed film that's downright revolutionary -- especially coming from Disney.

"Maleficent" may ultimately be important for reasons that have very little to do with the pros and cons of the film itself. It's a live action film that sets out to pain men with the broad, unforgiving brush usually applied to women. It's a love story without a man in the mix (and worse, without the hot lesbian sex that makes men tolerate that sort of thing).

Most of the women I know who saw the film willfully tuned out the crap (bad writing, poor construction, a raven with all these scars for some reason we never, ever learned) to take away something more important -- the message that sometimes, if a female star is big enough (thanks, Angelina!), they can get a big budget studio movie that's mostly for them. Yeah, their dates can come, but they better shut up and stick their noses in the popcorn if they have any complaints. It's what women have been doing through all those "Transformers" movies, after all.