In a compromise to keep our TV off as much as possible I have conceded two hours a day to both Ellen and Oprah Shows to Kela. So as it was, I was hobbling through Oprah’s show yesterday wondering if it had both always been an hour long and if Einstein ever considered the effect on perceptible relativity on the concept of time using the variable of a mass hoard of constantly screaming women. The topic was on men’s thoughts with guests Jay Leno, Brian McKnight and some sports writer. They were forced to answer some inane questions such as ‘why does my man go to strip clubs and why do they look at online porn’. At the end of the show Oprah and her legion of mindless nodding women all agreed that men were different and slight less evolved then women.
To this I agree and disagree. Plus, this is simplified misunderstanding should shame any sexually aware woman who can actually think without being blinded by the constant and blatant male bashing on this show. So let’s handle this one accusation at a time. First of all, yes men go to strip clubs (I don’t, but I understand why) and watch porn. But that is how men are sexually stimulated. Women, generally, are stimulated by thoughts and feelings associated with sex. This is why, according to a recent study, 53% of all mass market paperback fiction sales are romance novels. They not only outsell all other genres but outsell all others combined. Was that mentioned? No. Why? Because that doesn’t fit into the standard Oprah mold. Oprah does nothing to ever try to make women better individuals (prettier occasionally). They do this while, unless it’s a male celebrity attempting to sell something, continuously lowering the bar for men by always portraying them in the worst possible light. All Oprah shows can be narrowed down into four categories:
1. Something some men are doing is evil
2. You CAN look prettier!
3. This celebrity has a movie/book/album coming out
4. See, someone else has a crappier life then you and they picked themselves back up. You could do the same!
For those of you wanting to argue with this (I mean the females who are reading this) I offer the following chart from the previous month of October:
Date Aired Show Title Matching Category
10/31/05 Have You Let Yourself Go? 2
10/28/05 George Clooney's Big Buzz and the World Series Champs! 3
10/27/05 Oprah Presents Another $100,000 Reward 1
10/26/05 The Man Who Kept Oprah Awake At Night: A Million Little Pieces 3
10/25/05 A Hilarious Surprise for Michael Jordan 3
10/24/05 9/11 Widow Stuck in Her Grief 4
10/21/05 Her Husband Tried to Kill Her Three Times 1
10/20/05 Gay for 30 Days 4
10/19/05 The Number One Killer of Women Revealed 1
10/18/05 A Pro Football Player's Secret Shame 4
10/17/05 8 Women Oprah Wants You to Know 3
10/14/05 Jay Leno Introduces Us to Amazing Kids 3
10/13/05 Oprah's Bad Hair Day! 2
10/12/05 Oprah Special Report: Inside the Lives of America's Poor 4
10/11/05 The Oprah Show Captures Accused Child Molesters 1
10/10/05 O the Buzz: Reese Witherspoon, Ricky Martin and Nate's Big News! 3
10/7/05 Uma Thurman on Love, Marriage and Men 3
10/6/05 Are You a Racist? With the Cast of Crash 3
10/5/05 Sarah Jessica Parker, Orlando Bloom & Matthew Fox Reveal Their Favorite Places 3
10/4/05 Kidnapped by a Pedophile: The Shasta Groene Story 1
10/3/05 How Faith Hill Changed One Woman's Life Forever 3
Now understanding that we all occasionally need some mindless distraction, I have no problem with the mindless National Enquirer or Cosmo type crap (Categories 2, 3 and 4). What bothers me is the constant and backhanded degradation of men on her show (Category 1). Only the worst of men is ever represented and any positive real men are either celebrities selling something or backed by a ‘strong and courageous’ woman. As if no man could ever be a strong good person on his own.
Oprah isn’t the only one who does this. Most sitcoms on TV feature a big, dumb, overweight man supported by an intelligent, attractive, rational woman. As a man who is fairly proud of his ability to be intelligent, dependable and loving I do not feel that this TV version is accurate in any way. It is intentionally distorted as such because it has become the acceptable norm to bash males. This was originally condoned to compensate for decades of repression at the hands of white men. But those days have come and past. Neither my generation nor my parent’s generation had anything to do with that history – yet we still accept the punishment from generations we never knew. So I ask you, is it not hypocritical for women to continue this practice of degrading men because the current trend is to pretend that they are less evolved then they are? Do we all not see the future repercussions of such actions? What intelligent human would want to go through that gender reversal of power again and again? What would you think of a person who has to demean others in order to make themselves feel better?
Brian
PS I DO like the Ellen show
PPS The anagram is of 'Oprah Winfrey'
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