Obsessions and Lamentations #15 - Dudes Hatin' on Chicks Edition

Sos I’m sittin’ around watchin’ the Super Bowl like any good patriot should and I’m wonderin’, is there some kind of crisis in male/female relations going on in this country? I knew that a lot of guys fear and resent women, hell, we used to burn them at the stake in Salem when they got a little out of control. But since when did they start flat-out hating them? Asking my girlfriend if she was surprised by the level of advanced sexism on display she rolled her eyes in that way that suggests the question, “what planet have you been living on these past 40 years?” Yeah, I know, the Super Bowl is always filled with ads appealing to men’s baser instincts of objectification and territoriality. Nothing new there. What seemed different this year was the palpable sense of white male privilege under threat. I see this as part of a larger strain in the culture that started with the birthers and morphed into the Tea Party movement, with Sarah Palin its new Messiah (“I will live, I will die for the people of America”). It is a strain towards tribalism, which even a cursory reading of history tells us is never a good thing. 

How can I make such an outlandish claim on the basis of some moronic Super Bowl ads? Check out the Snickers commercial, which tells us that it sucks to be an old woman (or Abe Vigoda, let’s just say someone living off the government teet on Medicare and Social Security. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3rsaneyeXY ) and it’s cool to be a white guy playing football. Why do I suspect that a couple years ago, there would have been a token black or asian man on that team, in the interest of diversity? But that wouldn’t work because black guys on welfare are getting your tax money too, aren’t they? Then there was the serial killer-like repressed rage and misogyny of the Dodge Charger commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RyPamyWotM ). It was as if the men in the ad were saying “Sure, I’ll put the seat down, but first I’m going to buy this fucking truck and run you over with it.” For chrissakes, even the E-Trade babies are whining about the bitches in their lives. And let’s throw in a bash at the “brainiacs” who sit around reading “books” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgZ-8hNY0go ). Of course, in this universe just vaguely attractive women, worthy only of the chilled out white dude’s pick up lines and thinly veiled contempt, bother to waste time reading and, god forbid, talking about what they read. And then there was the nauseating Docker’s ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiS-2sTFdZ0) that told the nearly all-white crowd of singing guys it was time to “wear the pants”, which is code for “grow a pair and put your woman in her place.” This was complemented by an astoundingly sexist rant posted on their website called a “Man-ifesto”, which tells us that in the past “men took charge because that’s what they did” and when the “world decided it no longer needed men”, they were “left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny.” I’m not making any of this up. Women’s groups were thrown a feint when they were told that Focus on the Family would be running an anti-abortion ad with Tim Tebow. All that told us was that Tim’s mom thinks he’s swell and, reading between the lines, she’s glad she didn’t abort him in utero. I guess we can all agree on that. They must have been looking the other way when corporate America threw them a solid right to the solar plexus.

I know times are bad, and white guys are losing jobs at a relatively healthy clip. African-American unemployment is, as usual, much worse, but that’s beside the point. I think what these ads were telling us, if we didn’t already know, was that white guys are angry. They want you to give them their country back and while you’re at it throw in their balls for good measure. Things had gotten so bad under Bush that it made the possibility of electing an African-American President a reality, but that very same state of affairs has emboldened the most tribal strains in our reptilian brains. Where will it all lead? I’m getting ahead of the curve and pitching an ad to Bud Light for next year’s Super Bowl. Open on a young couple in their kitchen, regular guy in t-shirt and jeans, attractive woman, well groomed and mildly enticing. The man opens the refrigerator and looks inside, and while he does, the woman pulls out the last remaining Bud Light. The man stares blankly at the woman, then hauls off and punches her square in the jaw. She goes down hard and he picks up the bottle, sticks the top in her mouth and opens it with her bloody teeth. Man smiles and goes back to living room to watch the game.