In the wake of the murder of elementary school students and their teachers, as well as the mother of the shooter, Nancy Lanza, in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday, Hollywood has struggled to demonstrate sensitivity in its programming and premieres. The Weinstein Company cancelled the Los Angeles premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s characteristically violent revenge period drama Django Unchained, which ends with a bloody gun battle at a slaveholding plantation. Though its finale depicted an act of terrorism rather than gun violence (though such violence was threatened, but did not emerge), Homeland put up a title card before the episode began that warned that some images in the show might be disturbing in light of the Newtown massacre. And shows from Family Guy to Best Funeral Ever have postponed episodes until later dates. It’s one thing for networks and studios to observe a mourning period. But the more interesting question is whether the massacre will prompt longer-term changes in the kind of material Hollywood considers both marketable and appropriate.

In a series of Tweets, Time television critic James Poniewozik laid out the problem with these short-term measures. “THR: TLC delaying BEST FUNERAL EVER bc of Newtown shootings. Apparently becomes appropriate again Jan 6,” he wrote in a series of messages. “This recurrent thing, postponing shows bc of sensitivities–I get it. But resist the idea that something is ‘inappropriate’ for like 2 weeks…Either it’s inappropriate in general or it’s not.” There’s something sadly perceptive in the cynicism of that proscribed period of sensitivity. Hollywood’s acting on the recognition that after these increasingly-common tragedies, the members of their audience not directly affected by the deaths are hyper-cautious for a brief period, call for changes in all sorts of culture and policy, and then return to their preexisting level of sensitivity and allow those demands for a different path to peter out. The studios that have pulled or labeled programming or cancelled events are acting like savvy marketers, rather than like moral agents.

This is, of course, their prerogative and purpose as large companies. But just as it appears that President Obama and members of Congress are, for the first time in political memory, renewing the push for gun control legislation, I’m wondering whether some networks may decide to change where the line is for what they’re interested in airing.

It’s been a period of intense cruelty to children on television. On Sons of Anarchy, the children of the main character, Jax Teller, have been kidnapped and in car accidents. This season of Breaking Bad reached a turning point when Todd, a newcomer to the meth cooking operation run by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, shot a young boy who happened upon the men in the aftermath of a train robbery, though there was little evidence that the child understood what little he had witnessed. When children aren’t the victims of extreme violence, they are often being enlisted in those acts themselves. On Game of Thrones, while Sansa Stark is beaten by grown men and threatened with sexual assault, her sister Arya, on the run and disguised as a boy, kills another child to escape from King’s Landing, and must fight in battle to protect herself. And this season on The Walking Dead, Carl Grimes both witnessed his mother’s own impromptu caesarean section and then killed her to prevent her from turning into a zombie.
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On Friday, I laid out in detail the data on how women of color are underrepresented—and underpaid—in every aspect of the television industry. Today, I want to do something a little different. We all know about Shonda Rhimes, the single most powerful woman of color in the television business. And in the post-Girls conversation about the women of color who should be given the kind of creative control and financial backing that creators like Lena Dunham and Louis C.K. have received from HBO and FX, respectively, Issa Rae, the creator and star of the marvelous web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, has come up repeatedly as a suggestion. Rae’s work is tremendous, and unfortunately, it seems like her conversations with television networks lead her to conclude it was better to retain creative control and stay on the web rather than surrender her vision in exchange for a budget and amplification, and that rigidity on the networks’ part is a loss for them, and her, and us.

But it’s also worth remembering the women of color writing for network television who are less immediately visible because they don’t also appear in front of the camera. I called up a couple of television writers whose work I enjoy and asked them to recommend their colleagues, and added a few of my own. These are just a few of the women of color whose work is worth watching, and supporting. Some of them have already run their own shows. And I’d love to see more of them get a chance to do so in the future. In no particular order:

1) Nahnatchka Khan: Khan came up as a writer and producer on comedies like Malcolm in the Middle and American Dad*. She created Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, starring Dreama Walker, Krysten Ritter, and James Van Der Beek, which premiered on ABC earlier this month.

2) Denise Thé: Thé got her staff writing start on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and has since gone on to serve as the story editor on Medium and to write for Cold Case and Person of Interest.

3) Mara Brock Akil: She created Girlfriends and that show’s spinoff The Game. She’s a consulting producer on Cougar Town. And she wrote Sparkle, the Motown period piece that will be Whitney Houston’s last movie, and Gabrielle Union star vehicle Being Mary Jane, both of which are due out this year.

4) Silvia Olivas: Olivas co-produced Moesha and The Brothers Garcia, part of an initiative to make shows with Latino characters that would appeal to diverse audiences (these days, we just get Rob!). Recently, she’s been writing for children’s shows like Martha Speaks and Special Agent Oso.

5) Maurissa Tancharoen: Part of the Whedonverse by marriage (Tancharoen is married to Jed Whedon), Tancharoen wrote for Dollhouse, and currently is writing and producing in the Spartacus franchise for Starz.

6) Aisha Muharrar: Muharrar writes what I think are consistently some of the warmest episodes on Parks and Recreation, including “Kaboom,” involving prank volunteerism, and this season’s “Born and Raised,” the show’s rebuke to birtherism.

7) Stacy Littlejohn: She created MTV’s Single Ladies, wrote for both Wanda Sykes and Cedric the Entertainer, and has produced Life With Bonnie and All of Us.

8) Cherry Chevapravatdumrong: Another veteran of Seth MacFarlane shows, Chevapravatdumrong is a long time Family Guy writer and story editor, including credits on the series’ movies.

9) Natalie Chaidez : She’s produced In Plain Sight, V, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes, Judging Amy, Cracker: Mind Over Murder, and New York Undercover and written for all those shows as well as Kojak, Skin, and Past Life. Need I say more?

10) Elaine Ko: Another veteran of the Family Guy writers’ room, Ko is presently a writer and executive story editor on Modern Family, one of the most successful comedies on television.

*I was totally surprised by this, but it’s notable how many women on this list are veterans of Seth MacFarlane shows.

I’ve always thought that being a member of the First Family must be a pretty stressful, depressing experience. But NBC needs to do something other than what it’s doing, so maybe their forthcoming comedy about the president’s family co-created by former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett will have funny new insights. To help them along, here are five real-life First Family disasters, and their television comedy solutions:

1. Popular radio host of the opposite party insults 13-year-old First Daughter’s looks. Rush Limbaugh famously held up a picture of Chelsea Clinton while cracking, “Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” Solution: Taking the warm but misguided advice from his college buddy, Phil Dunphy, the President stands up for his daughter in a way that seems dorky and embarrassing at the time but that wins him points at home, and ultimately, with the voters.

2. President’s younger sister has a lobotomy gone badly wrong, his family institutionalizes her, everyone keeps mum. It says everything you need to know about how the press coverage of presidential races that the Kennedys basically got away with concealing Rosemary Kennedy’s intellectual disabilities and the lobotomy that left her confined to an institution. Solution: Sue Sylvester yells at the president in memory of her deceased sister with Down syndrome, leading to a Very Special episode family reunion and absolutely no character development for anyone.

3. President uses younger daughter’s beloved family pet as cynical prop during political speech: The Checkers speech. It was a thing:

Solution: Brian Griffin shows up, makes martinis for everyone, and lectures the president firmly on the dignity of humans and alcoholic dogs alike. The president later tells absolutely no one about his hallucinations of a talking dog and trusts that the discretion of the West Wing staff means no one will ask about the smashed cocktail glasses in the Oval Office, but resolves to treat animals that bear his name with more respect.

4. First Lady takes vacation that is criticized in the press as overly lavish and out of touch with the times: Michelle Obama got dinged for taking her daughters to Spain last summer, even though she paid for the trip — including the cost of her government plane travel—herself. Solution: Family Ties-style, the First Lady’s breezy family vacation turns into high state-craft when she’s accidentally entangled in an international spy caper. In the end, with help from FBI Agent Bert Macklin, she recovers the president’s rubies, making the cost of the trip totally worth it. Plus, she makes a courtesy call on whichever monarch said hijinks take place in proximity of.

5. First Daughter marries Speaker of the House, has affair with, and child by, a Senator, is a generally hedonistic, awesome (if probably pretty unpleasant in real life) gossip. Seriously, someone should make one of those goofy First Daughter-style movies about a theoretically fragile daughter of a president who needs protecting when she tries to be her own person and live a normal life, but make it about the spectacularly un-fragile, un-PC Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Solution: None, just a highly profitable spinoff that sells lots of “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me” t-shirts.