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Kerry, I watched the Super Bowl with my husband, 14-year-old daughter, and a friend of hers, and we were all discouraged by what you identify as the truly nasty tone toward women that ran through the ads (and let’s not mention the explicitly porn style of the Go Daddy ads which had the girls vowing they would never use Go Daddy.) And Jess, I agree with you that if this is the way companies want to advertise their products, let them. But I was struck that all the loathing of domesticity in the commercials was completely undercut after the game by the image of a tearful Drew Brees tenderly holding and kissing his baby. In his post-game interview Brees made clear that while he was thrilled for this win, the bigger deal was the birth of his son.
Photograph of Brees family by Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images.
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Well, we’ve seen the Tebow ad and I guess we can see how it slipped past CBS restrictions on advocacy ads, as there was nothing even mildly controversial about it. But I wanted to respond to KJ’s post from late last week about a reluctance to see “soft-focus” ads on either side of the abortion issue.
KJ, you wrote that my idea for an ad—showing people going through their daily routines and then telling viewers “my mom chose life”—was disingenuous because it shows only one side, and that a truthful ad would have to show coat hangers and neglected poor kids. Well, yes, ads usually do show only one side of a story. You don’t see many obese people in McDonald’s ads, and those Bud Light commercials never end up with someone taking a field sobriety test. An ad that showed the pros and cons of life without legal abortion might not be pretty. But a truthful “pro-choice” ad wouldn’t be all gossamer and rainbows, either. Sure, it could show women who have been able to do more with their lives and careers because they were better able to plan their families. But if it were truthful, wouldn’t it also have to show an ultrasound of an abortion (like the one Abby Johnson claimed to see but likely never did)? Or maybe it can include a description of a partial-birth abortion or a testimonial from a woman whose baby was born alive after an attempted abortion and the clinic failed to help her.
I don’t come by my pro-life views easily. It’s impossible to go through life—or even through Target some days—without thinking, “My god, who let them have a kid?” or “OK, some people clearly should have abortions!” when you see some of the less-than-stellar examples of parenting that abound. But there are no easy answers. Women die in childbirth, and women die having (legal) abortions. Children are brought into the world by parents who aren’t ready for them, and children who could and would lead normal and wonderful lives are aborted. The truth is ugly, but it’s ugly on all sides.
Photograph of woman by Stockbyte/Getty Images.
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Anthropologist Grant McCracken had a good post a while back about the mythic Beer Guy. Beer Guy is the guy you usually see during Super Bowl commercials. He is the likeably dumb, happy-go-lucky former frat boy. He showed up during this Bud Light commercial. McCracken didn’t get into this, but Beer Guy requires that the people around him—often, women—be his foils. They are humorless, dull, competent. They join book clubs and actually want to talk about the books.
I skipped the Super Bowl, but watching these commercials, I’m not seeing a lot of Beer Guy. I see his angrier counterpart. This guy maybe used to be Beer Guy until he started dating some horrible shrew who makes him carry her lip gloss. Now he’s just resentful. Beer Guy was hovering in between the joyful, beer-soaked depths of his animality and the banality of civilization. This new guy, he of the Flo TV and Dodge Charger ads, has tipped over into civilization and feels oppressed.
The Dodge ad is about escape, a solid if not particularly groundbreaking theme for a minutelong spot. This universal fantasy of deliverance from daily life is taken, for reasons unclear, to be exclusively male. Men like to drive fast cars. Women? Well, we adore recycling, cleaning the sink, going to work, walking the dog. And don’t get me started on sorting the laundry! Bliss. We couldn’t possibly ever dream of getting away from such chores; mostly we dream about our male partners learning to master them. The men in the ad are only truly themselves when they’re driving. Women are most fully realized while separating whites from darks.
So before I go share a very special moment with my vacuum, I'll just add that the the Dodge commercial brought to mind Fantastic Mr. Fox, a good movie with the same sad theme—likeable male fox struggles to choose between animal nature and the graces of civilized family life. Dull, humorless wife-fox pushes for civilization. We know life would be easier if Mr. Fox submitted. But we’re never really on the side of the shrew. We’re always pushing for revolt against the pressure of civilizing conformity. And so when the story inevitably casts the woman on the side of domesticity, the woman inevitably loses.
Photograph of couple by Stockbyte/Getty Images.
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How seriously should we take Sarah Palin as she makes all the early exploratory moves of a presidential candidate? (See: the urgent speech to the base in Tea Party land, the dangling of herself as "willing" to challenge Obama on Fox, the appearances on behalf of other candidates like Gov. Rick Perry, the assembling of an experienced set of handlers, and of course the Facebook account and Twitter feed.) In mulling that question, it's worth spotlighting her mastery of the favored tactic of the 2008 race: taking umbrage. As John Dickerson wrote two years ago, when Obama and McCain were just getting started, "If done correctly, candidates can exploit flamboyant displays of public upset to gain attention, raise money, put their opponents on the defensive, and distract from an unfavorable story." Palin did this effectively when Obama made his quip about how he bowls as if he's in the Special Olympics, and she did it again last week when she called for Rahm Emanuel's resignation because he'd called liberals retarded. Insert your favorite third example here.
John wisely warned candidates that to win at taking offense, they have to keep their expression of outrage in proportion to the offense. But I don't think that rule applies to Palin. In fact, it's part of her genius that it doesn't. Her Rahm scolding is a perfect example. To be cold-hearted: She's the one with the Down syndrome kid, and that trumps the wing-nut aspect of saying that the president's advisor should resign over one word. She gets to be the mother bear. That could play well with her base, the main audience at this early point, and it probably won't alienate the independents she eventually needs to win over. It's another genius shot from her motherhood arsenal—an arsenal she's figured out how to deploy like no other woman in politics.
Photograph of Sarah Palin by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
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More from the experts on child rearing: "Children of moms who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately; talked about their children's preferences, thoughts and memories during play, and encouraged successful strategies to help solve difficult problems performed better ... on tasks that call for executive skills than children of moms who didn't use these techniques." That extra bonus load of guilt for all the times you didn't leap away from your desk to respond to a child who couldn't get Thomas back on the track (or helpful aid in interacting with your toddler, depending on how you look at it) comes courtesy of researchers at the Universities of Montreal and Minnesota and was extracted on ScienceDaily.
The researchers, like many researchers before them, looked at mother and baby pairs to draw their conclusions, conveniently letting fathers off the hook for any responsibility for their child's cognitive and executive functioning. I understand that in some studies—those involving breast feeding, say—the sex of the interacting parent will obviously affect the outcome. I'm not seeing the connection here. There's nothing uniquely maternal about helping a child get the bunny puzzle piece to fit into the rabbit-sized hole.
Photograph of family by Stockbyte/Getty Images.
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Amanda, I disagree that the Tim Tebow ad was meant to be cruel and braggy. I found it innocuous—and even when I thought it was going to be more explicitly anti-choice, I did not think pro-choice people should protest in order to get it yanked off the air. Dayo, you say that CBS was complicit in the airing of sexist, misogynist ads during the Super Bowl. I agree that those ads, particularly the FloTV commercial, were deplorable. But I don't think asking CBS to be more strict in its regulation of standards and practices is a good solution. Especially since it's one that might backfire.
Yes, these misogynistic ads were approved by CBS. But humor is almost always a matter of taste. When you're asking a network to police something as subjective as taste, there are going to be missteps and some segment of the population is going to be offended. CBS has proven itself to be fairly conservative and tasteless by our standards, but that is its right, as it is our right to complain or to change the channel. It's better that these ads air and create discussion—and there's been fantastic chatter all over Twitter and from sites like Jezebel about these awful ads—than for the networks to be censoring more than they already do.
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The 44th Super Bowl was a fairy tale for the New Orleans Saints—and a bad dream for the women who made up one-third of the television audience. Over at The Sexist, Amanda Hess has graciously compiled all of the most egregious instances of sexism, racism, and homophobia broadcast during the commercial breaks last night. None of them are funny. Most of them are downright offensive. But all of them, Hess points out, were approved by CBS.
Here it’s important to out CBS as complicit in all of the advertorial programming shown during the Super Bowl—most of which was ineffectual at best, dangerous at worst. And as Dana Goldstein reported last week, CBS made particular overtures to Focus on the Family, offering the same “guidance” it administers to all wannabe Super Bowl advertisers on what would be “appropriate” for their anti-choice advertisement starring football star Tim Tebow. But by allowing the barrage of misogynistic (‘milkaholic’ babies fighting over a howling 'wolf'?) ads to blanket the year’s most-watched evening of television, CBS has done both short- and long-term damage to women’s well-being.
Based on some informal friend-polling, I’m not alone in thinking that these ads were some of the worst cases of lady-bashing in Super Bowl history. But if Mad Men has left any practical lesson, it's that the glamourous cadre of Madison Avenue hacks are also pop psychologists plugged into the elusive id of America, knowing what we want and how we want it before we do. What’s more, companies dropping upwards of $1 million on airtime surely focus-grouped each spot within an inch of its life.
So someone in the midlife-male group that's the target demographic for Bud Light, GoDaddy.com, or Doritos liked these ads—thrilled to them, even. What could possibly justify the attraction? Economist Brad DeLong flags a graph that may hold some explanatory power.
Men ages 25-54 are experiencing their lowest level of employment in the United States ever. Despite the recession, women are doing compratively well: Unemployment for men of all ages is at 10.8 percent, while only 8.4 percent for women. (Black men are at 17.6 percent.) And the precipitous drop since the beginning of the recession means that there are fewer men who can fulfill the hetero-normative cultural diktat to be “master and commander” of their domestic lives. Reihan Salam's essay on "the death of macho" laid out the emotional terrain:
[A]s men get hit harder in the he-cession, they’re even less well-equipped to deal with the profound and long-term psychic costs of job loss. According to the American Journal of Public Health, “the financial strain of unemployment” has significantly more consequences on the mental health of men than on that of women. In other words, be prepared for a lot of unhappy guys out there—with all the negative consequences that implies.
In other words: These men may not be carrying lip balm, but they are out of work and mad as hell.
The facts on the ground are not funny—families are doing more with less, less with less, and pride is being swallowed with every unanswered resume sent out. Sublimating these anxieties into that quietly violent Dodge Charger ad is therefore manipulative in the extreme (and pointless: If my theory holds, brand-new, $30,000 cars should be out of reach for this audience). Whether the commercials interpret the present or predict the future, this ad trend—like selling your wife for tires—should be roundly condemned.
Photograph of man by Photodisc/Getty Images.
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—Sarah Palin isn't ruling out a bid for the White House in 2012. Claiming she'll run if it's the right thing to do, she said it was "absurd" to rule it out—some are even joking she thinks it's her "divine mission." [Washington Post, The Daily Dish]
—Some claim the Focus on the Family ad featuring Tim Tebow in last night's Super Bowl was a whole lot of hype. The ad, which steered clear of explicitly stating the group's message, was meant to be pro-life but seemed more pro-Tebow than anything else. [Salon]
—Washington, D.C., is still digging itself out from last Friday's snowstorm, but reports are already estimating a new helping of snow this week. Some forcasts are predicting eight more inches for the area starting Tuesday afternoon. [Washington Post]
—Husband and wife Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally share adorable and honest moments with New York magazine. The couple has been married since 2003, but the spark is definitely still there. [New York]
—A woman claims she was raped by NFL star Michael Irvine. Irvine and a friend illegedly consumed large amounts of alcohol, lured the woman into their Florida hotel room and forced themselves on her. [Courthouse News Service]
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After all the sturm und drang over the Focus on the Family-sponsored Tim Tebow ad, it was inevitable that some people would find the ad itself underwhelming. If you had no idea what the underlying story of the ad is, you would think that the Tebows spent a ton of money to explain that the Florida Gators quarterback has a mother who finds him loveable, a message that is a tad obvious even in these dark times. Trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who hasn't seen the ad, the most I could come away with was, "Are they trying to taunt the motherless?" It was heartening to see Focus on the Family flush millions of dollars down the toilet for an eminently forgettable spot. Half the audience probably thought Tim and Pam Tebow met on eHarmony.
Of course, those of us who knew about the ad ahead of time took the time to watch it carefully, and I could tell what they were trying to do. The theme seemed to be, "Sure, we're openly campaiging for an abortion ban that would dramatically escalate the maternal mortality and injury rate through both illegal, unsafe abortions and by forcing women undergoing deadly pregnancies that doctors believe will kill them, but look, we grin really hard, so you know we can't be that bad!" Attempts to put a smiling face on a misogynist ideology has been the anti-choice trend for a couple of years now, but as usual, they don't control their message as well as they think they do.
The ad shows Pam Tebow telling a detail-free story about how she almost lost Tim during her pregnancy (they decided to eliminate the part of her usual story on this where she almost died), and while bragging that her family is "tough," she gets tackled by Tim in a CGI-constructed way that makes it look like a real football tackle. Then, snuggles. Two unwittingly nasty aspects of the ad jumped out at those of us at Casa del Marcotte: the blindside tackle and the bragging about toughness. In an ad designed to send the message that Focus on the Family doesn't hate women, it seems a little thoughtless to show a man run over his own mother while she's trying to talk. What would have been a bit of harmless-seeming tomfoolery in a more mundane ad took on ominous tones because it served as a visual representation of Pam's story of how she was nearly killed bringing Tim into this world.
If anything, the bragging was even more upsetting. When you argue that you survived a harrowing pregnancy because you're "tough," you imply that other women who die under similar circumstances were too weak to deserve to survive. It's already bad enough that the religious right shames women who choose abortion for choosing their education, careers, relationships, already existing children, or their own lives over the obligation to have another baby. But shaming women for being weak who die trying to fill the mandate (or who are deprived of the choice) to bear children at all costs? That's dark indeed, no matter how glowingly white the background of the ad is.
Photograph of Tim Tebow by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images.
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Jenny Sanford, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, is out with a memoir, which, according to the New York Times, she wrote "in part for their four boys, who remain confused about their parents' pending divorce." Jenny apparently thinks her book will set her sons (and the world) straight—as if this is the very thing her boys and the world most need. While I think Mark Sanford is likely a loon and clearly wasn't a good husband (or governor), and she (and the people of South Carolina) are right to divorce him, this is one case where I think Jenny is the bad parent.
I say this because one of the best books I've ever read on divorce is Anthony E. Wolf’s Why Did You Have to Get A Divorce? And When Can I Get a Hamster? In fact, I've read all Wolf's books—including his one on teenagers (even though I don't have one yet). Wolf is not of the school that all divorces have to be irreparably damaging to children. But he does powerfully and persuasively argue that one of the worst things divorcing parents can do to their kids is to share with them all of their adult, messy, and self-justifying, or even justified, reasons for getting a divorce. Why? Because it invariably puts kids in the middle and asks them (either explicitly or implicitly) to take sides in what really is and should remain their parents' private dispute. Is Mommy right that Daddy should have worked harder on the marriage? Or is Daddy right that the marriage was passionless and doomed? Or vice versa? No kid can answer such questions, because to do so would be to risk the affection of the other parent—the very thing that most terrifies kids about divorce. Kids don't want to take sides. And frankly, they don't care. It's the adults who care. Kids just want to love and be loved by both parents.
Thus, when such questions arise, Wolf wisely counsels that, even if one parent is truly a jerk, short of situations of actual abuse, the other parent must respond, challenging as this can sometimes be: "That's between your father [or mother] and me." And leave it at that. Anyway, as Wolf notes, if one parent is truly irresponsible or a monster or simply absentee, the kids will discover this on their own. They don't need the other parent pointing it out. In fact, they probably know it all too well—and it makes them sad. Obviously, Jenny Sanford has not followed this advice but instead has chosen to air her family's dirty laundry in public. When the Times reporter asks her why she's chosen to expose her kids' father "as a laughably cheap, self-absorbed, soulless, cheating first-class jerk," she replies snootily: "It's not the book that put him in a bad light." Maybe so. But this book sure puts her in a bad light. Does she really think this is what her kids need, to be thrust into the spotlight and embarrassed yet again in front of their friends (as if their dad's press conference admitting his extramarital affair wasn't mortifying enough), all supposedly for the kids' own edification, and even as their parents' divorce is still raw? I don't.
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