100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
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Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Kathryn Kolbert
As president of People for the American Way and a leading abortion rights defender, Kathryn Kolbert is an expert in the constitutional definition of privacy. In his book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin credits her with “the most audacious litigation tactics in Supreme Court history.” Kolbert sees a strong connection between women’s and LGBT rights, and the Supreme Court is the key to advances in both arenas. “In this next election, the focus of the Supreme Court is on the line,” she says. “We need to be not just in the gay world but in the world with straight allies.” Before joining PFAW, Kolbert was executive producer for the weekly National Public Radio show Justice Talking, and created the program’s educational Web site, justicelearning.org. –LL
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