The Pincer Movement Against Men

Have all you married men out there noticed the change occurring in what Dr. Phil calls "relationships". In the old days, couples had good old-fashioned arguments--Ricky vs. Lucy; Ralph Kramden vs. Alice, and Fred battling Wilma.

Lately, instead of getting mad when men say something women deem stupid, they look at us with a kind of pity; like "we" can't help what we do in the same way a puppy doesn't know he's not supposed to wet on the carpet.

I credit this change to media; which is conducting a classic military maneuver known as the "pincer" against males.One side of this pincer is something with which most men are already familiar. It's called Prime Time television. The depiction of men on Prime Time TV is two-fold. All men in sitcoms are insensitive husbands who are barely smart enough to scratch out their names on a sheet a paper. Think of The King of Queens, Everyone Loves Raymond, Terms of Engagement. In contrast, the men on all of the Prime Time dramas are uniformly intelligent, good-looking, and uncorrupted--CSI, CSI Miami, NCIS, The Mentalist, and Eleventh Hour. The key to their apparent success as human beings and men? Each and every one of them are unmarried! Once we become husbands, TV relegates us to something slightly more intelligent than chimpanzees.

The other side of the pincer is daytime television. It is far more insidious. And just because your wife works, remember there are DVR's and TiVo. She can watch this stuff anytime she wants.

It all starts with the so-called morning shows. The typical cast is one or two males surrounded by several females. The men, like Matt Lauer, are polite, well-groomed, and they actually listen to their female on-air colleagues. Worse, during the mandatory cooking feature, they always jump up to help in the kitchen--making souffles and chicken wraps. Our wives believe we should be like that, and one is hard-pressed to imagine the likes of Lauer scratching his privates, ripping off an "air biscuit", belching or blithely acknowledging his wife at home with a series of "uh-huh's". In fact, I bet Lauer knows how to use fabric softener.

By mid-morning, the female hosted talk shows predominate. There's Ellen, Oprah, and The View. Very few "real men" appear as guests on these programs--and if a real man is invited, it's usually a set-up. Remember Tom Selleck and Oprah on guns? Instead, the women are treated to a parade of caring males, usually actors who are busy saving seals, deploring global warming, or feeding the world's hungry. Face it guys--after a day of swinging hammers or pushing paper, nothing we do adds up to the ideal of "husband" or "man" TV creates for our wives. If we go off to golf or fish on Saturday instead of volunteering at the Food Pantry, the worst fears of our women are confirmed.

And, if you want to know why 56% of women voted for Obama, just watch The View one time--where four old, craggy liberal women beat up on one very hot conservative chick. Unfortunately, pitting the intellect of Barbara Walters against Elisabeth Hasselbeck is simply telling the women of the world that conservative and pretty = stupid. Worse, The View has blasted apart the theory that when women engage in a cat-fight, the tearing off of clothes is mandatory.

By mid-afternoon the soap operas are aired. There are two kinds of male behavior on soap operas--evil men who bed every woman they see, and nice married men who only bed 55% of the women with whom they come in contact. If your wife is a tad suspicious, blame the soaps. And of course, even though these people live in very small towns, evidenced by the fact they all eat at the same restaurant and go to the same parties; all of the men either run giant fashion companies, media conglomerates, or perform brain transplants between infidelities.

And one other thing about day-time soaps...none of the men have chest hair. In fact, they all look as though they waded chest deep into a vat of Nair. At one time, young boys worried that the lack of facial or chest hair made them less manly. Now, daytime TV wants all of us to look like those pretty boys from France that adorn the perfume advertisements in women's magazines.

After the soaps comes Dr. Phil, who spends considerable time telling disgruntled women that men are basically helpless, stupid, and unable to change behavior unless we are tricked into it--the same way one tricks a dog into taking a pill by hiding it in a wad of cheese.



So guys, this is why our wives now view us with pity rather than anger. By day, we can't measure up to the Matt Lauer's, nor the do-gooding actors on female talk shows. By mid-afternoon, women are reminded of both our lecherous ways, and our career failings. And by night, all married men are cast as idiots, all single men as geniuses and the objects of our spouses desire, because they are single.

Our salvation? There's always Ghost Whisperer.