I learned something about myself recently. Something I was not even slightly aware of. Something that seemed to defy centuries of evidence. I learned this thing about myself by looking through magazine ads and watching commercials on T.V., so it must be true. Apparently being a white, male, husband and father qualifies me to be part of a “special” class of people; a class of completely incompetent, moronic, single brain celled, white men who are the moral, intellectual and physical inferiors of their wives, completely out of touch and an embarrassment to their kids and who have to be frequently reminded to breath so that they don’t accidentally kill themselves. I mean, it really is amazing that I am even able to type on this keyboard right now. That kind of intellectual exercise would normally be far beyond the capability of someone in my class. I’ll have to eat some fried chicken on the couch without a shirt on and take a nap while I let my nine month old daughter play with small pebbles after I am done typing this to recharge my brain cell.
Now, I am not a social commentator and I am honestly not just a little out of tune with pop culture and current social norms; so, for me to notice something like this means it has probabl gotten out of hand. I am not the only one by the way. Did you know that there is a campaign devoted to banning commercials that make men look like idiots? Here is what Brian Regan has to say about it.
Thanks Brian for bringing some humor in on this deeply disturbing sociological phenomenon. What is it about smearing white males in advertisements that helps sell a product? Honestly Brain Regan is not far off. His bit was funny but it also describes a commercial that I could see on the tele (if I had one that is).
I can see it now; the setting is a McMansion in the suburbs; the nine-year-old son is sitting quietly in the living room by the fire doing his astrophysics homework; the preteen daughter is chatting on the ipad to her preteen friends about how hot Beber is; the mom flies in wearing her superhero outfit just coming home from an intense 3 hour work-out. Then enters the white male. He is an overweight, blue-collar worker with a five-o’clock shadow. He wears his underwear on his head, his tie is tucked into his pants and poking out of his open zipper and he has toilet paper stuck to his shoe. He trips as he comes in the door falling on his face. His family all just laugh and shake their heads as he struggles to get up; after all he’s an incompetent, stupid white male, what should we expect? He exerts all of his effort to get to his feet but then the size of his gut snaps the belt on his pants and they fall to his ankles tripping him again causing him to slam into the kitchen table that mom had just set with the dinner feast she had been preparing. She sighs and pulls a Digiorno pizza out of the freezer saying “It is times like this that I am glad Digiorno can make up for my idiot, white male of a husband.” Then she heats it up with her superwoman laser eyes and they all sit down to eat making sure dad’s bib is fastened tight so that he can’t get it off this time.
