The tv commercial my wife made a point of was where the husbund was the size of Tom Thumb, with self esteem problems. I forget the product being sold, but I doubt it was something short men would be buying!

Now that Vonage commercial... I guess it depends. I think she is really cute. If she kept swinging those hips at me she might find herself swept off her feet and tickled right out of her clothes. But, of course, I have known issues with women, what can be expected of me?

disigny:

Blueskies: there is a simple answer to most of your questions: as the Chinese have always said, culture is powerful. When the US took up the idea that an uncontrolled mixture of cultural immigrants is a marvelous thing, they (we) chose to ignore that culture comes along with the immigrants, so the situation of dissolving ideas of "what's right", i.e. lack of consensus about the simplest things, and a fragmenting of the "culture" is a perfectly predictable result. That doesn't mean we can't all be civilised, but alienation is to be expected, as are antagonistic groups. disigny

That seems to describe the general situation. What we should do, if anything at all, seems to depend on which of the immigrant groups or factions you identify with. Some like it just the way it is, and hate anyone who mention it.

blueskies:

Now that Vonage commercial... I guess it depends. I think she is really cute. If she kept swinging those hips at me she might find herself swept off her feet and tickled right out of her clothes. But, of course, I have known issues with women, what can be expected of me?

Blueskies, I agree that she's cute, but i try NOT to make every spokeswoman into a sexual fantasy. I'm not condemning you for doing so, certainly swinging her hips could be a tantalizing stimuli, but I digress......

Deduction pondered over what motivation would someone have for conflict between men and women. In terms of screenwriting, conflict and controversy is necessary for a good story: protagonist and antagonist, some identifiable problem.

But this is propagated simply for profit. And marketting firms often identify men 30-60 are hard to motivate.

So there's that theory. Meanwhile....

Oops. Freudian slip. I watching the commercial trying to see what the earlier poster saw in it, I couldn't, she came across flirtatious is what I should have said.

I have seen subliminal subtle insults buried in the background of commercials and station msgs that make me think our buttons are being pushed. These commercials and station messages seemed to have short lives, a few days. What I noticed by accident were the insults to males-Naturally!-, but I think it's possible that subliminal insults to women went by me unnoticed, or I was on the wrong channel. Something has gotten women as angry as white men, besides the obvious simplistic goading by some hired guys with irons. C'mon ladies, just laugh it off most of us are with most of you, not them, regardless of the vote.

Adding to things , there is what I call the Frito Bandito Effect. Everybody but white guys had advocacy groups suing, it seemed it was only safe to have white guys in all the villain roles. Remember the albino's, our new super villains for a while?

Why make men angry at feminists & women generally? One scenario- A democrat women is running in the Presidential primaries. Angry male democrats tend to vote against the woman The democrats are linked to feminists, anger transfers and even more men abandon the Democrats.

<link>

Why make feminists angrier at men? Look at what's happening. They get ever more uncompromising and divisive. More Divide and Conquer the democrats

Where do I stand in this? I got angry at having my buttons pushed. And I'm generally on the women's side, if they could just lighten up. But the Great Feminist Crusade demanded something to tilt against. Humanism anybody?

"White men" means all caucasian males. I did not do the defining or grouping of what made "white men" as defined by Affirmative Action laws. .

I thought restoring Affirmative Action was one of Democratic party goals?

You don't know bureaucracy. We had Bradbury , a black Mayor, lots of civil service became and stayed black racial feudal enclaves, staff for Colleges. Universities. Social Services, all kinds of hospitals, schools.. Besides what the heck has being white meant in our lifetimes?? . At best it means ..I'm not sure what it means. Means your on your own.

"Easy one first, I fail to see how you can determine how many people are racist"

By intuition and experience.. by talking with people, interacting, living, observing. eating with them. Non scientific seat of pants judgement. I could be totally wrong.

Everybody has racist tendencies, yet to my eyes whites are the least racist. Here, in southwest USA.

I managed to get out a little more than most people. I even read, that's rare. I got the working class grand tour of LA, and interacted across all levels of society across all neighborhoods, in business, factories, city halls, colleges, projects, warehouses, bomb shelters, ships, stock exchange, mansions, refineries, dams, prisons, ports, porn studios, hovels, movie studios, stables and zoos throughout Los Angeles County and City for a number of years. LA is fairly multicultural.

Society here seems to be slowly moving backwards btw. i.e., Few of the 1st generation immigrants tend to know or care about our Civil Rights struggles. .. Caucasians are minorities here btw. If immigration slows things would turnabout. The outlying areas are fully integrated except where immigrant communities have sprung up. And there really is no such thing as a white person only neighborhood.

" terms of "white men" who have (if you want to group every man considered "white" in a group- which makes no sense to me but hey whatever floats your boat) traditionally had more power as a group than anyone else in this country. When exactly did that change?"

Where do you live?????

I live just off the beach in paradise, and sing "I love LA".

I did not do the defining or grouping of what made "white men" as defined by Affirmative Action laws. We just follow orders like everybody.

As`a group maybe "White Men" still hold a lot of power. I see in the movies and TV lots of white people. Not so many in RL. I'm guessing they are in New England, partying. It's multicultural here. Its class, not race, Its money, not ethnic.

<link>

"Are the majority of power players in our country Asian and transgendered, is there a secret cabal of African women running things?"

There is a really wicked cabal of female supremacists living around the Marina if you want to know, but not African!<G>

I'm not saying its a bad life, in fact I live in paradise, just off the beach, and sing "I love LA". (and stay away from the Marina).

What I AM in favor of is diversity. People that complained about diversity in school admissions policies don't seem to understand the concept that at a learning institution, it would benefit the learning environment to have a diverse population instead of a homogeneous one.

You have a good argument, I agree that the students would benefit in so many different ways I wont try to write them out. But what of the students not able to attend from lack of available slots, or money?

They don't seem to understand that we have a multicultural country and it makes sense to explore and understand different folks instead of cowardly hiding oneself in segregated communities. If all things being equal, a school or job chooses a candidate who represents a more multicultural perspective, i have little problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the criteria- which shouldn't just be what color your skin is or isn't, but who you are as a person and what you can contribute to the learning or work environment

The way our country has been creaking at the seams and stressing along the social fault lines I wish we could slow down some.

I would like to be able to expand the schools too so that 'affirmitive action loses all meaning, everybody goes.

"the Planned Parenthood and similar organisations. Where did their money come from??

If these people are our friends, why do they want to stop us from having children? What was the benifit to them?"

They were not our friends.

frankly,what misery, the last thing I can imagine wanting is to be on either end of "someone strong to put me/you in "their place". I'm with you.

We all speak about the USA as multicultural, then speak on issues like this as if we are uniform.

Iamyourliver:

you are more of a Carrie.

No, thank god I never knew any "Margarets".

I'm more of a hambone.

deduction:

"These shows of which you speak- the ones with men acting like buffoons? Do you want to know who writes them, Usama? Men! I've been asking for years why men like to portray themselves as such. "

No women writers you say? No women producers? No homosexuals in the industry? Each with their own bias and prejudices . So what answers did you arrive at?

"The only men who tend to talk about it are the ones like you who are complaining. Truth is that most men are NOT complaining about that."

Frito Bandito Syndrome. Remember the Mexican Americans demanding positive portrayals, suing for $100 in 1968 money for every person of Mexican descent in the US? <link>. Recall the Blacks, Feminists, American Indians, homosexuals, every immigrant group demanding the same thing? Everybody was suing.

So, as you know white guys became the default villain, dufus, buffoon, any type of required negative character. They could not sue. So they got a concentrated version of what had been spread across the spectrum before. Albinos were our new super villains.

So why is it that guys who complain of it, are somehow different than were the mexican americans, or feminists? Most guys don't complain because they quit watching those shows, got busy doing other things. Didn't we use to hear about how the adult males were the hardest target for advertisers to reach?...did you consider what that might imply?

" And quite a few american men pride themselves on being as stupid as the buffoons on the screen- taking pleasure in lowbrow humor and sterotypical behavior. "

People are just mimicking what they have seen. That's why the demand for positive role models for mexican americans, women, etc. Show wonderful role models if you want more wonderful men. But then, where will we get the fools and villains our screen shows demand?

"To me, embracing a stereotype is a classic sign of idiocy, or if that's being too harsh, let's say limited capability for nuanced thought. It's done by women and men alike in many different cultures. "

There you go. So why be so judgemental of others of what is apparently a universal trait.

" Note that when it comes to children's television, it's much more about children being smarter than the parents regardless of gender."

There was also all the esteem & confidence building for young girls, which was great. But. It seems we cannot do one thing, without neglecting another, the boys were neglected for a while I had heard. Also, of course, women were more involved than men in selecting children shows. It paid to flatter the women.

There's been a sea change in many of these things, the slow drift seems heading for more balance. Now "they" (our secret manipulative controlling and essentially benevolent upper classes) are/were shifting focus onto BOTH men's and womens sexual and physical health and happiness, and the FritoBandito Syndrome seems to be slowly going into remission.

, About the Vonage commercial? I have not seen it,

I did. I think that one is more in the mind of the beholder.

The commercial with the 3 inch tall husband with self esteem problems might be taken as very offensive to short men though, don't you think?

"but I suspect that your revulsion to it is more about a complete misunderstanding of Culture as opposed to anything else"

Whats your understanding of Culture? Help us..

"Which brings me to another point. How can it possibly make sense to try and judge a culture that you don't understand (obviously) based on your own cultural perceptions?

It's not that it can't be done, it can. But it serves no purpose and is intellectually dishonest. Apples and oranges, so to speak."

Please expand on this. Would you explain our culture for us? I also really need a civics lesson, what the heck are our obligations to each other, to the state, of the state to the citizen, who says so and why do we need to listen to them? Meanwhile the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is forty-two, but who framed the question and what was it anyway?<G>

cya, deduction

I think I have an excellent understanding of American culture, btw Deduction.

I encourage you to provide evidence of my error in understanding.

And please show me a commercial where a man uses his hips to knock a woman off the screen, other than a porn site.

Coincidently, I wonder if the misogynistic tendencies found in porn is somehow fueled by or a reaction to the angst or frustration that men feel towards mainstream misandric cultural trends.

How healthy is the Manichean cultural conflict between the sexes?