August 9, 2011, - 2:22 pm
Anti-Male ABC: Seeking “Affluent Women,” New Netwk Shows Feature “Emasculated Men”
Apparently, ABC now stands for “Anti-Male Broadcasting Company.”
Seeking more affluent women for its core audience, the network’s fall line-up, announced Sunday, will feature “emasculated men” and “empowered women.” And America’s men are sitting by and taking it. So, maybe, life imitates crap art. Check out this quote which appeared atop the Life section of yesterday’s USA Today print edition, but is only available online in this cached syndication:
“The core target audience of affluent women is absolutely critical,” [ABC Entertainment President and programming chief Paul] Lee says. Several new shows will feature “empowered women” (soapy Pan Am, Charlie’s Angels) and emasculated men (comedies Man Up and Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing).
Huh? Dude, where are your testicles?
Can you imagine if ABC had the gall to announce: “Hey, we want wealthy men, and so to attract them, we are gonna show weak, bimbo chicks and men in charge, the way it used to be”? Nah, if ABC did that, Congress and the FCC would immediately haul network execs to testify in their boxer shorts while being cross-examined by the male-repellant Glorias–Allred and Steinem–and being threatened with castration.
ABC programming chief Lee elaborates on ABC’s fall line-up attack on men in another publication:
Women are taking over.
That’s the prevailing theme in many of ABC’s new slate of shows. One of the offerings comes from . . . Tim Allen. The comedian will star in the sitcom “Last Man Standing,” which debuts in October.
The show follows Mike Baxter (Allen), who calls the shots at work but is outnumbered and overruled at home by his wife and three daughters. To make matters more emasculating, Mike’s wife, Vanessa (Nancy Travis, “The Bill Engvall Show”), gets a raise at work and starts making more money than him.
“Tim’s take on it is that he’s really in a world surrounded by women instead of ‘Home Improvement,’ where he was in his own world,” said Paul Lee, ABC’s president of entertainment at a Television Critics Association’s press panel Sunday. “We are a network that’s dominated, and certainly in terms of the value of our sales, with affluent women’s audiences. So to look at men in a women’s world was a very interesting take.”
No, not “very interesting.” More like, very disgusting. And sexist.
The Alphabet Network will also be picking up the sitcom “Man Up,” which follows male friends who are afraid they are soft because they use flavored creamers in their coffee and play video games instead of using their hands and getting dirty. Mather Zickel (“Reno 911”) and Teri Polo (“Meet the Parents” movies) star in “Man Up,” which will premiere in October and air after Allen’s “Last Man Standing.” In the midseason, the cross-dressing comedy “Work It” will debut. It follows two desperate and unemployed men who dress as women to get jobs.
OMG, it’s “Bosom Buddies” on estrogen. G-d Help Us. STAT.
“It’s the job of television, and has been since we started, to look at the plight of men,” Lee said. “And I think we look at it in very different ways. The ‘Man Up’ guys are resentful that they didn’t go to war like their (fathers). They just play ‘Call of Duty.’ It’s our job to create television that questions how people feel in the world.”
Says who? Uh, no, that’s NOT your job, ABC. Your job is to entertain, to provide quality programming suitable for broadcast TV, and to entertain everyone, not just Eleanor Smeal and the winning WNBA team.
Don’t forget that the public broadcast airwaves–including ABC–are owned and regulated by the public. Given that, I’d like to know: where the heck are the cojones of the male half of the American population, and why the heck aren’t they “mad as hell” and “not gonna take it anymore,” a la Howard Beale in “Network?” Like I said, can you imagine if a major network said they would feature women this way? Wouldn’t happen. But the reason it’s happening here is because men are taking it, accepting it. They’re not getting angry, like they should be. There is no more male rage in America. Instead, that’s been subsumed by women. And men are busy holding their wives purses.
I’m thinking of filing my own complaint with the FEC about this, since no men are pursuing it. Maybe a defamation or discrimination lawsuit against ABC is in order. Frankly, I wonder where the men in Congress are. They are still the majority in Congress, but even the so-called “courageous conservatives” really aren’t that courageous. They don’t have the decency to hold hearings and take ABC to task, as they have the power to do. Why not?
Yes, our collapsing economy and physical national security are very important. But so is the threat of America’s dying “strong male.” As I always say, no matriarchy in history ever lasts. Not one matriarchy has even been temporarily great and contributed to civilization. A weakened American male is the ultimate national security problem. And if you think it has no effect on the economy, think again.
Heck, if we actually had real men in Congress and the White House, they’d have had the balls to cut what we needed to, rather than cut their balls off and avoid the spending cuts.
I blame part of ABC’s new line-up on ball-less “male” actors in Hollywood. Tim Allen is selling out his manhood for a paycheck, rather than saying, “Hey, I don’t go for this portrayal of my gender. It’s bad for me, bad for my sons and grandsons, and bad for America.” I cannot imagine John Wayne or Charlton Heston willingly playing roles like Allen is, no matter how many figures are in the paycheck. And Allen is an emblem of many American men. They’ve sold out. Sold out for video games, wives who make more than they do, etc. And they’ve sold their souls with it.
American men, it’s time to man up. Where are you? Why aren’t you fighting back and writing letters to ABC in droves? Why aren’t you demonstrating outside ABC in New York, demanding an end to the sexism?
And why is the only person upset about this a woman–me? That I even have to ask any of these questions shows me the American male is really an extinct species. The younger generations merely have slacker shells born with the “accidental appendage” of a penis.
I can’t get excited about a medium I rarely watch. The idea is to be selective and watch only programs, not watch TV. These shows will die a quick death. Most new shows don’t make it. Usually, 1 or 2 of the new ones get extended.
JeffT on August 9, 2011 at 2:25 pm