Olivia Munn: the problem isn't that she's hot, the problem is she's not funny

I never watched whole episodes of Attack of The Show but I've seen clips and I saw her on this Daily Show episode. Her delivery just sucks. Her only line that made me laugh was, somewhat ironically, "I don't know what those words mean." Also there have been accusations that her geek persona on G4 was fake; that she doesn't know much about tech and video games and she was just reading the cue cards, whereas the other hosts were actually interested in and knowledgeable about the subject matter. The problem we have with her is not so much that she uses her looks to get her foot in the door. It's that once she's inside, it becomes clear that she didn't have anything else going for her. Stuff like this demonstrates that hotness is not only necessary and sufficient, having other qualities - like humor or talent - is actually a disadvantage.

Something clicked for me today: women who are clever and funny are automatically read as less attractive. See: Tina Fey. I suspect if there had been two finalists for the Daily Show job and the other one was equally attractive but better at doing comedy, they would have preferred Olivia. For example, Erin Gibson, the new Sarah Haskins with her Current TV show Modern Lady, is both very funny and very attractive. Why don't we see more people like her getting wider exposure? And every single joke about Liz Lemon centers around the premise that she's unattractive. Why does that work? Partly because Tina Fey is such a gifted comedic performer that she makes it work. But I suspect it wouldn't work as well with an attractive male actor playing a character that's supposed to be that physically unappealing (unless they do styling to make him look a lot more unappealing than usual, which is also partly how they make it work on 30 Rock).

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