Dumb Guy Syndrome

My posts on Top Sites Tuesday have tended to be humorous, but this week there’s a serious matter on my mind.  One of my most important posts ever was Dumb Guy Chic, in which I complained that modern media tends to portray being dumb as essential to being a Man’s Man. This is especially true of sports programming and male-oriented commercials. Attitudes that wives are simply pests who keep men away from watching football, beer is more important than family and doing anything cultural is for sissies are part of the regular fare radiating from our TVs and radios.   And just as I did back in 2011, when I posted Dumb Guy Chic, I’d contend that … Thought Number One: Even when it’s done humorously, such attitudes send entirely the wrong message to impressionable boys and adolescents.

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

Kim Jong Un is the thirty year old dictator of North Korea, best known for continuing the development of nuclear weapons with which he threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States, conducting public executions, maintaining prison camps for political prisoners, and starving his people while the elite live lavishly.  Dennis Rodman is a former basketball player who won five NBA Championships, was Defensive Player of the Year twice, and a member of the NBA Hall of Fame.  He is known as perhaps the greatest rebounder ever to play the game, as well as for his bizarre hair styles, tattoos and body piercing.  He publicized his first autobiography by showing up in wedding dress and his second by appearing in a coffin.  He is a certified headcase and publicity whore.  Last week, Rodman was in North Korea with the staff of Vice Magazine, which is filming a special for HBO.  Rodman and the Vice crew, the first Americans to meet Kim Jong Un, were guests at an exhibition game featuring members of the Harlem Globetrotters and a sumptuous banquet that Rodman described as top tier.  I wonder how the 3.5 million people who’ve starved to death in North Korea since 1995 would feel about that.   Returning home, Rodman said that Kim Jong Un is a great leader.  I love him, Rodman said.   Dumb.

Smart Kids, Dumb Guys

In a recent comment, my blogging friend, thesinglecell, noted that my posts have been reflective lately, and looking back, they have.  Oh, yeah, my Inner Curmudgeon has slipped in a thought or two but I haven’t let him take charge of a post lately.  That’s not good for me or him.  Top Sites Tuesday, the meme where we get to offer Two Thoughts on Tuesday, has been my Inner Curmudgeon’s playground so today, the keyboard is his.   And, as usual, one of the things bugging us is TV commercials.   Have you considered that somewhere in the country, advertising agencies are being paid millions to use Smart Kids and Dumb Guys to sell us stuff?   I guarantee, I have never bought a single thing because a precocious kid or a sweaty athlete said I should.  No, I’m not saying that all athletes are dumb … they’re certainly smart enough to make lots of money for starring in dumb commercials.

Glass Houses

Thursday afternoon, on my way to the bank, I turned on the radio to see if our local sports-talk weenes might be talking sports for a change, what with the Super Bowl on Sunday.  Since KSPN has elected to inflict the Max and Marcellus Show on the noon time slot, I knew the chances were slim.  Marcellus Wiley is a former NFL football player who actually knows something about sports.  Max Kellerman is a know-it-all who thinks he knows sports, continually interrupting Wiley with his opinions, offering him vocabulary lessons, and correcting his English.  I’m sure there are guys who enjoy this smart ass – dumb jock schtick but I find it unlistenable, particular since Wiley is no dumb jock.

Dumb Guy Chic

In the sixties through the eighties, the so-called second wave of feminism sought to address gender inequality in laws and culture.  One focus of that movement was the portrayal of women in popular media, especially on television and in commercials.   A major catalyst for the movement was The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, which noted that magazines and other media most often depicted women as homemakers or models of attractiveness and in doing so, nurtured a narrow and servile view of women.   Women in TV commercials were obsessed with whitening their laundry or whether their kitchen detergent made their hands feel rough.   Even as late as 1979, studies indicated that women were portrayed in magazines as passive, conforming and less competent than men.   I think it’s undeniable that progress has been made … career women are a staple of modern television … and what I’d suggest is that the media worm has turned, as evidenced by the number of dumb guys in sitcoms.  We are living in the age of Dumb Guy Chic, in which men are not only portrayed as dumb … acting dumb is promoted as a quintessentially male quality.