Recently I tuned into a video replay of a conference on Women in the Media available at FORA.TV (they’re something of a YouTube for the more serious set).

A fair amount of the discussion concerned the New York-based Women’s Media Center, the nonprofit organization that is doing a great deal to advance the case that mainstream media could benefit from more women journalists, radio and newspaper commentators. They argue that women need to make their presence know in the blogsphere and that the major political debates certainly could use women of the caliber of Gwen Ifill, Katty Kay of the BBC or Norah O’Donnell as questioners in the main event, not merely in the softball side game, interviewing the second fiddle veeps.

I quizzed a NPR producer about why Gwen Ifill was not worthy of handling the McCain-Obama "Main Event" debate. The producer thought it was because she "probably" would not ask tough questions of Obama, the Black Candidate. Not the Gwenn Ifill I know – she doesn’t hesitate to take on the tough issues. By that logic, who is capable of handling the Biden-Palin debate -– only a eunich?

The real reason that we do not have women journalists or commentators is that women, among the public, are not demanding that it happen. Instead, women seem to prefer to have a Father Knows Best Figure or Little Girl Next Door reading the teleprompter news, rather than doing the hard work of researching the issues. Women in the audience still want the public news broadcasts to be like the Soap Operas: "nice."

Women in journalism are hiding behind "nice," non-threatening nonprofit organizations that study the issues to death, never debate them full frontal. The Women’s Media Center or the Pew Center try not to offend anyone, hoping to quietly nudge the major networks into the 21st Century.

Only Arianna Huffington has the proverbial cajones to support any reasonable semblance of a public debate. Gloria Steinem, Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd write "opinion pieces" like little girls afraid they might get their pinafores messy in the real world. Women have given more ink and tele-time to the shenanigans of Palin’s children and hairdos than they ever gave to Hillary Clinton’s very genuine campaign to address the substantive economic, public policy and international affairs issues that will determine our future.

Women get the media that they demand: pessimistic or optimistic. If they want Pap, by heaven they will get Pap from the major media outlets. If television and radio only blare out the modern day equivalent of a 1930s melodrama, day in and day out, then it’s our own fault for staying tuned and giving trivia the attention and air time it does not deserve in the 21st century economy.

And why is it that the three largest mega-media outlets (the dominant publication corporations) in the world pander exclusively to women readership and focus only on style, dress, food, consumerism and excess-consumption ad nauseaum? Magazines now try to intimidate me into reducing my damn carbon footprint with guilt-ridden articles oriented to "women only" telling them how to buy up new stuff and make new pledges to save the planet with their dumb economic choices. Don’t women care about investment? Savings? Credit? The value of their portfolios and retirement funds? Is Suzie Orman the only woman qualified to speak on women’s financial stability?

Why is it that all of those for-women-only, for-profit magazines don’t speak to any of the major economic, human or public policy issues that the Women’s Media Center considers vital? Why is the WMC unable to market itself and its views in the same for-profit world in which the major networks exist, the major studios exist, the major news media production centers exist? Why do women’s organizations have to be "NOT" for-profit, but always telling FOR-profit companies how they should be doing business?

There’s really something wrong with this picture.