All-White Tonight Show to Feature 5th Consecutive White Male Host

You should pettition Black Entertainment Television (you know that non-racist station) and have them call one of their talk shows "The Tonight Showw".  You can have someone from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with a degree sponsored by the Negro College Fund host it.  And since you won't have to worry about the "man" holding you down, and knowning that the only thing bringing in the viewers is the name, it will surely be a hit!  I mean people will flock to it.  Right? Am I right?

You know what, stop the whining.  You are free.  Start with the family unit and build up.  Noone owes you anything. 

What happened to D.L. Hughley ? Oh....I guess he wasn't a 'serious' enough CNN host.

This is the most ridiculous, racist, idiotic thing I have ever read.

Harry Smith:

Employment discrimination is unlawful and certainly excluding all women and Blacks and Latinos from certain areas of employment should be illegal, even in Hollywood.  

I disagree with you when you say that no one owes me anything.  The United States owes people who are not white men an equal chance to succeed regardless of our gender and/or skin color.  No job anywhere in the United States should be off-limits to anyone simply because of their gender and/or skin color.  Do you agree with me?

Black Entertainment Television is a response to the very historical trend of color-aroused hiring that I have discussed above.  If you look at the list of hosts of "Face the Nation" moderators, you will discover that seven out of eight have been white men.

• Theodore F. Koop (1954–1955) [1]
• Stuart Novins (1955–1960)
• Howard K. Smith (1960–1961)
• Paul Niven (1961–1965)
• Martin Agronsky (1965–1969)
• George Herman (1969–1983)
• Lesley Stahl (1983–1991)
• Bob Schieffer (May 1991–present)

If you look at the list of "Face the Nation" talk show moderators, you will discover (but probably not be surprised) that twelve out of thirteen have been white men, and twelve of the last twelve have been white men.  

Martha Rountree1947 – 1953Ned Brooks1953 – 1965Lawrence E. Spivak1966 – 1975Bill Monroe1975 – 1984Roger Mudd / Marvin Kalb
(co-moderators)1984 – 1985Marvin Kalb1985 – 1987Chris Wallace1987 – 1988Garrick Utley1989 – 1991Tim Russert1991 – 2008Tom Brokaw2008David Gregory2008 – Present

All of the examples above pre-date the founding of Black Entertainment Television.  Effectively, were it not for Black entertainment television's attempts to put Blacks in host roles, there might not be any Black television show hosts on television at all.  Am I wrong?  (Oprah Winfrey is in a category by herself, since (a) she is not a Sunday morning host and (b) she is not a late night talk show host.  But she IS the most popular host on television.  

Likewise, the Negro College Fund was established at a time when Black students were not admitted to most colleges in the United States. It was not established to create an all Black enclave, but rather to create an opportunity for Blacks to achieve an education in spite of the fact that they were excluded simply on the basis of skin color from white colleges and universities.

So, why wasn't Oprah Winfrey offered the Tonight Show spot before anonymous David Gregory was?  Wouldn't she have guaranteed ratings that Gregory has not been able to accomplish?

Isn't it time that there be a serious late night television host who is not a white man?  (There have been some exceptions.  Can anyone name them?)

Can you be more specific in your criticism and avoid using words based on the root word "race", (like "racist"), since the Human Genome Project has recently documented and declared unequivocally that "race", like the "Tooth Fairy", simply does not exist.

I think that in order to sort matters like this out, and to avoid arguing and name-calling, we should avoid reliance on words and concepts whose basis has been utterly disproved, such as "race", "racist" and "racial".  Can you make your criticism in a more intelligible way, if you still want to do so?

You don't seem to be getting me John Doh.  "Race" does not exist, according to the Human Genome Program, and so it is not possible for anything I say to be "race-based."

You say that five consecutive white men have been chosen for the job based on "audience enjoyment", so you seem to be saying that audiences enjoy white men more than they could enjoy anyone else.  How does this square with the fact that Bill Cosby's television shows were the number one and two shows during the period when he was NOT chosen to have a late night show on any of the networks.

In fact, the Bill Cosby Show was intially rejected by at least one network on your theory that whites would not enjoy seeing Black people on television.  However, whites LOVED the Bill Cosby Show, and now they are very pleased, according to public opinion polls, to see their brown-skinned president on television every night instead of the torture-crrazed white men whom he replaces.

I repeat:  This has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you still are calling "race", but which has been proven not to exist.  We're talking about skin-color aroused ideation, emotion and hiring behavior.  There is no empirical proof that America wants or needs an all-white male late night talk show lineup.  The same is true for Sunday morning talk shows.

Much more likely is that America would like some variety in its variety shows.

D. L. Hughley was disliked among Black audiences even before he became a talk show host, so much so that his concerts were picketed last year after he called Black female college basketball players "nappy-headed".  It ought not surprise anyone that Hughley couldn't attract a diverse audience when he had alienated Black people before his show even hit the airwaves.

Esta, I am entirely serious or I would not have taken the time to document the fact that there is a white male monopoly of the Tonight Show, Face the Nation, and late night and Sunday morning talk shows in general.

Although commenters would like to argue with me, they haven't offered any information to contest what I've said above.  They just are angry at me for saying that which is incontrovertibly true and statistically incontrovertible.

Interesting analysis.

Out of curiosity, do you know if Bill Cosby was interested in the job at any point? Is it possible that they offered it to him and he turned it down?

It is people like yourself, holding on to the idea that someone, somewhere, owes you something, for something done to someone else some time ago, that keeps your apparenlty raceless conglomeration of dark skinned African descendants completely subjugated.  All your language points to someone giving you a handout because you're owed it.  If you want to throw around Cosby as an example, then take what he says to heart:

"it's almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat. It keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24594-2004Jul2.html

Mr. Holland,

You said, "Now, we've obvious made some progress over the last three years against the white male supremacy paradigm, because we now have a Black male president ... But late night television as well as Sunday morning talk shows have made virtually no progress at all, in their thinking and in their hiring practices."

Do you know how ridiculous and trivial it sounds to casually mention that the world leader is finally a black man, and then follow it up with a complaint about something so comparatively unimportant as a talk show host position?

I would think greater advances in the black American cause could be realized if you would focus your energies on encouraging other black men and women to use this monumental historic event to show how grateful and proud they are to be Americans where it has now been proven that any color can succeed. Instead you appear to promote self-pity white indebtedness's. Your post angers me and I truly hope that most other minorities are excited about recent advances in equality. Your words, read by white men, achieve the opposite of your goal, unless your goal is to continue racial division.

Gann

You are a dumb nigger! Not a Black man but a nigger! If you would ever stop and take responsibility for your actions you could stop blaming the white man. It's all your fault! And always playing the race card is going to send your kind right back to the cotton fields! Fucking Retard!

television in general lacks diversity.  television shows from early morning to late night is not impressive, non-creative and stagnate. Conan's first week as the Tonight Show host, did not include one minority!  It's unfortunate.

Your article here is just dumb. It's a stupid guessing game, why didnt nbc give cosby the tonight show? Maybe because he had the number 1 show on television and didnt want to give it up, or maybe he wanted to go work on movies, or do standup. why dont you go ask him. Leno, and Conan got the job because they were qualifed, meaning they are funny and have a good tv personality. Leno wasnt an unkown either, if you really did watch the tonight show during the carson years you would have seen leno on there alot of times. Arcenio was on another competing network, thats why he didnt get the job, plus he had a demographic-blacks. The tonight show is non demographic. You need to understand what your talking about before you write an entire article. Dont assume NBC is a racist network, or that they wont give shows to black people, do some research, go interview nbc executives. While your their ask them about Fresh prince of bel air...I think at somepoint that show dominated ratings on prime time television. will this be your next article : RACIST NETWORK NBC, GIVES SHOWS TO BLACK FAMILIES; AND TURNS COLD SHOLDER ON WHITES!!!

The 'jews' are the original Master Race. If you're not a 'jew' you were put on this earth to serve them, they believe. Read the talmud, their 'holy' book. All you minorities and females need to gang up on them, not the White Male. When the 'jews' have completely conquered America (the real Israel) you'll be slaves right beside the White Male because you're not 'jews' either. HDEANBERRY DOT COM

I like how anything you say cannot be defined by science as "racially charged", even though it is a direct attack on (in your exact words) WHITE MALES. But at the same time that you attack this demographic for their "racism", you claim that nothing you say is, or can be,  fuelled by your own racist views. I am a white male, who has a brother who is half black. So I am what you think you are: Someone whos views are not biased based on skin color. The genome program is crap if it suggests that there is no such thing as race, you just defined a demagraphic using the criteria of skin color so your own argument contradicts itself.

If you want to exclude race from the picture, than dont use it as an equation in your own arguments. Are you saying that the reason the EXTRORDINARILLY QUALLIFIED white Connan O'Brien is the replacement host for the "all white" tonight show is based on a fictional criteria? That makes no sense. Besides the fact that ratings dont lie and Connan has them. 

You sir, are the VERY reason this country cant get over the whole race issue. A minority with a chip on your shoulder. I am a white male, I work at an Electronic display systems company. FACT: I am the only white male employed in my department. FACT: every other employee in my dept  is an immagrant of mexico,FACT: this is not an equal ratio to the number of hispanics in my comunity. FACT: I am the single lowest payed employee working for this company even though I have years of experience over many of my coworkers FICTION: we live in a world where the white man gets any extra credit for being white.

Those are the facts, and if you still have the same "white male conspiracy theory" views on society, you are delusional and there is no hope for you to be free from the chains of your own oppressive thoughts.