And somewhere, Anne Beatts & Rosie Shuster are screaming

Ok. So there's this TV special, hosted by Kelly Ripa, called "The 50 Funniest Women Alive." It's on Oxygen. No play on words intended, but maybe there should be, as I'll get to in a moment.

It's like those shows a lot of the cable networks do, where people comment on some list or another that has been put together. You know the drill. Now, I didn't watch much of the show-in retrospect, perhaps because I didn't want to be kvetching about the omissions.

However, I did happen to catch their pick for 37th: Tina Fey. Now, despite how I may feel, it's one thing for her to be on such a list. It's quite another for one of the anonymous talking heads on the special to identify her, as indeed one did, as "the first woman writer for 'Saturday Night Live."

!

No, she was not the first woman writer for "Saturday Night Live." She was the first woman head writer for "Saturday Night Live." A reasonable accomplishment, but not what they said at all.

"Saturday Night Live" has had women writers from the very beginning, the two originals were Ms. Beatts and Ms. Shuster. Follow those links to read their bios, including lists of the "SNL" characters they created, separately and in collaboration with each other or others.

They were influential parts of the writing staff, and by most accounts they didn't always have an easy time of it. They deserve better than to have that erased by some ignorant non-entity on television who didn't know what he was talking about before he opened his mouth.

Now, if I were paranoid, I'd say this is all part of what I see as the inexplicable overhyping of Tina Fey. Yet I don't blame her for this--she certainly knows who Beatts & Shuster are, she's even one of the people quoted on that Beatts bio page.

But...

Oxygen is the channel with a mission statement that reads-

Attempting to create a new kind of relationship between women and the media based on honesty, humor, and heart.

-it really does, look 'em up on Yahoo!

By letting someone be dishonest, or at least stupid, about women who should be (and I'd like to think, are) inspirations to young women who want to do funny work...they really show themselves to be kind of heartless.