Category: Men

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Mischief or Menace

Theme of the week. Bad behavior. Naughty or criminal?

Jussie Smollett the latter, rendering real victims’ voices silent. As with #metoo overreach, backlash will be longterm. Billionaires out of control. Bezos’ fling has taken his focus away from bizness. Super Bowl owner Bob Kraft has enough money to hire the classiest call girls in the world, yet goes to a strip mall for creepy massages with sex-trafficked enslaved girls. Miranda Lambert marries a cheating New York cop. Klobuchar really is mean it seems. And. Don’t even talk about R. Kelly.

A few of the week’s similarly untoward headlines. On to the Oscars. Meh.

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Under My Thumb

Hillary says women who voted for Trump were under their husband’s or male partner’s thumb. Value all women! Nope. Feminism for some. Sandra Bernhard agrees. Republican or even Independent women don’t have minds of their own. So woke. On the flip side, Pulse night club shooter’s wife was acquitted because she was seen to be cluelessly under her husband’s influence. Geraldo Rivera says he didn’t vote for his Celebrity Apprentice friend The Donald because his wife swayed him. But. Hey. Not everyone caves.

Never apologies to the Stones.

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A Country in Chasm

Our divided country’s fissures don’t seem to be narrowing. A staged CNN anti-gun town hall exploited grieving kids and relatives of murdered students. The White House held its own listening meeting as the President pushed arming military-trained teachers. Today NRA Chair Wayne LaPierre used his insane rant at CPAC as a call to war against rising socialism.

Then there’s the never-ending gender divide. New York Times opinion column The Boys Are Not All Right by Michael Ian Black discusses guns and boys. It so resonated with my sentiments on the subject, I commented and it was a NYTimes Pick. Making young men feel that they are toxic surely will not provide a healthier outlook. Broken record alert.

Even the poor Central Park forsythia is conflicted. Is it February? Hope springs… 

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Toxic Misandry

If I read another article that blames school shootings on “toxic masculinity”… scream. Yes. Young men are usually the shooters or bombers or vehicle drivers who kill lots of people. Maybe we should wonder why besides blaming it on a whole gender. Current societal and cultural energy is focused on empowering women. That’s fine. Let both women and men feel valued. Why is it a zero sum game? If fathers are nurturing and loving, isn’t that great? I saw moms at the Women’s March make their sons wear t-shirts that said “female is the future”.  Hmmm. Wonder how it made those boys feel not to be female.

What’s the answer? Value all people. Let the students of Florida lead the way. Yay.

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The Upside Down

9 hours of Stranger Things. An allegorical sci-fi thriller with an exorcism thrown in. Kids are good actors. Weekend diversion. Another season assured. Follow the Three Musketeers wrapper to Dustin’s buddy d’Artagnan crashing an upside down Snow Ball dance. Now-memories.

Downside up. As discussed, the #MeToo movement may have unintended consequences. Sheryl Sandberg agrees. Men may eschew women in the workplace. Dating done?

Upside. Claire Underwood lives! House of Cards continues. Frank killed off?!
And. Christiane Amanpour. Replacing Charlie Rose on PBS.

Holiday photo by G. Levine:   Shelburne Centre, Western Massachusetts. 

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Reining Men

Okay. Al Franken. Several congressmen. Journalists. Directors. No industry nor political persuasion seems immune from viral misbehaving men. How to rein them in? Speaking out is a good start. Finding strength in numbers has opened the floodgates. It could also unleash a pandora’s box of blaming men for every ill. I’m still liking most men. They can be and have been champions personally and professionally. More of them than those jerks encountered along the way. But. It’s necessary to put a fence around criminal behavior. For sure.

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Morning Low

Baseball. Joe Girardi?! Why. World Series. Cool second game. Homeruns galore. And. More of the same. Gold chains. Chewing. Expectorating. Yeah. Gross. Not as yukky as harassment claims against Mark Halperin of Game Change. The Circus. And. Morning Joe.

As Shark Kevin O’Leary said today to Megyn Kelly, the financial services industry has consequences for these actions, so it is rare in that sector. It wasn’t in my day. Bottom line, if you are someone’s boss, of any gender, don’t hit on them of any gender. It’s a power thing.

Ironic fact: Mark Halperin’s mother is Ina Weinstein.

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Hillary’s List

Hillary Clinton’s new book. What Happened? An in-depth catharsis about why she stunningly lost the election to that “reality star clown” Donald Trump. It clearly wasn’t her fault.

On her blame list: James Comey. Vlad Putin. Julian Assange. Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden. Matt Lauer. Mark Zuckerberg. Baskets of deplorable men. Well. All white men. Plus Barack Obama. So. What happened? Men happened. Of course.

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Farewell Mr. Lovely

President Barack Obama. A lovely man of honor and integrity. A mensch. A role model for young people everywhere. Global peacemaker. Gifted orator. Honest leader. Invested father. Courteous gentleman. Funny, too. As you say farewell tonight, know that we will miss you.

Hope you continue your work with “My Brother’s Keeper Foundation.”  Hope you will take any calls from President Trump. He’ll need your counsel. Hope you’ll weigh in on important global and domestic issues in your spirited yet fair way. Hope you’ll succeed in redistricting efforts. Hope you’ll retain your audacity of hope.

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Coarsest Discourse

Can’t the election just be over? It has happened. The coarse discourse of this campaign season has gotten worse. It has devolved into a tit for tat of Donald and Bill doing bad things to women. Pussy bows and pussy footing around. The larger problem of men with fame and power taking advantage of women over the decades. From LBJ to JFK. Congressmen. Newsmen. Creepy bosses. Casting couches. Complicit spouses.

It’s a dynamic that seems to be never ending. Too bad the first woman to become President is the wrong person to shine the light on this ongoing epidemic.