Baby Names: Guest Post by a White Male

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 sitcoms and 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 trends; so, for me to notice something like this means it has probably 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? The comedian Brian Regan does a bit about stupid husband commercials. I couldn't find the video or I would put it on here but I highly recommend you watch everything Brian Regan has ever done. The man is funny. 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 suburbia; 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. Enter white male. He is an overweight, balding, 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 supermom 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.

Does anyone else notice this and have a problem with it? I am seriously not making this up, it's like some propaganda conspiracy against white men or something. It is disturbing the amount of stupid white men commercials there are and they all paint the same picture: mom is the wise, voice of reason with a heart of gold and the backbone if the family, the kids are smarter than dad, and dad... well, his brain stopped developing after he was five years old and still can't go to the bathroom by himself.

One advertisement agency said when questioned about their commercials that mock men and fathers "Put simply, our work speaks the truth. It always comes out of the truth of the brand and connects with consumers in ways that we’ve found ring true with them." Oh, they just speak the truth. Well I'm just a stupid white man so I wouldn't be able to tell you about truth, but maybe you could watch a series of their ads and tell me how true they ring.

here is one

and another one

and one more

And those are mild.

All of this begs the question for me. Why? How in any way does smearing white men have anything to do with trying to sell things. It doesn't. What's the angle? What's the agenda? Now, I know being a white male means my higher reasoning skills are seriously lacking, so all my brain is capable of coming with is two possible reasons. First, it has become PC to think that white men have been and are the cause of every injustice ever transgressed and need to be punished for a past generation's crimes against women and minorities. And if that is how you feel then you need to go find and desecrate their grave sites or burn an effigy or something like that. By the way, bad things have been done throughout history by men, women and children of every ethnicity, race, color or what have you. Secondly, is this an agenda to get people to actually think this way about white men? I have a feeling that behind all the stupid white men, who don't know how to tie their shoes, can't make a decision without their all knowing wives holding their hand and who are mentally more underdeveloped than their kids are self hating Americans who see white males as the elite, bourgeoisie oppressors who need to be taken down.

This one kind of astonished me. Listen to what she says at the end about her family.

Correct me if I am wrong here but I thought racism was defined partly as stereotyping members of a race in a way that makes them seem inferior. I guess that definition wouldn't totally work since we are only dealing with half the members of a particular race. I wonder what the definition of sexism is? Sexism: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex. Hmmm.

My advice, not that it is worth more than a handful of dirt, is for the media to start portraying positive role models and stop brainwashing people into believing absurd, baseless, sexist, and racist lies. Last time I checked that wasn't suppose to be legal. White dudes, don't make it easier for the media to negatively stereotype you.

Because a lot of this has been a bit heavy I think it appropriate to leave you with this.