Tonight is Saturday Night Live’s second-last show of its 35th season, and also, hands down, its biggest: Newly-recelebrated old-school superstar Betty White is hosting what has become the Mother’s Day show featuring SNL’s history of funny, funny ladies, which means the return of some top alumnae like Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, and Molly Shannon. And of course Tina Fey. The “women aren’t funny” meme is pretty dead by now, killed by the relentless dominance of Fey in pretty much every comedic endeavor she tries, plus people like Poehler, and Sarah Silverman, and Chelsea Handler, and Jenna Fischer, and Wanda Sykes, and Kristen Wiig, etc. etc. etc. — but the wildly-unequal ratio in the biz still lives on.

I remember when Christopher Hitchens wrote that ridiculous Vanity Fair piece about how women aren’t funny. I wrote a screed about it and got in a public scrap with Graydon Carter after at a very awkward luncheon. What can I say, this line of reasoning has always irritated me. Women aren’t funny? Really?