This past weekend, Mediaite contributor Jasmine Moy took in the New Yorker Festival, one of the city’s hottest cultural tickets every fall, usually featuring very smart people sitting in chairs on stage, talking thoughtfully about smart things, for longer than five minutes and without interruption. Why is there so little of that on the telly? It even had its share of naughtiness: “They were small breasts, in keeping with the understated nature of the magazine.” If you want to find out the context for that remark, you’ll have to read on.

On Friday, David Brooks used his New York Times column to announce the first round of his Sidney Awards for the year’s best magazine essays. It was a varied and inspired list — except out of the six essays chosen, none were written by women. Today, in his second set of winners, that wrong was righted. But, two out of 14?

What can we learn about New York Times columnist David Brooks through his favorite essays of the year, published annually as The Sidney Awards? Well, he loves The New Yorker, paid special attention to the health care debate and, uh… doesn’t read the work of too many women. Fortunately, another batch is coming Tuesday.