Perspectives

"Hon, how come you're such a pudgy slob of a numb Chuck?" asks the clearly exasperated wife.

"Oh, now Dear, I can't seem to help it. I really don't have much for brains, my receding hairline matches my disappearing scrotum and my witless behavior mirrors my lackadaisical ambition. I'm just your average American white boy you see on TV, don't-cha know."

It is said that who is ridiculed is often a cultural clue as to who actually wields the real power. In today's daze of political correctness, every segment of the American populace is virtually off limits for ridicule and evisceration except for America's favorite punching bag — white boys. I get that, I do.

I've poked fun at big dumb white boys myself. As a lifelong, card-carrying white boy, I can unabashedly wield the ax of humor and scorn at rabid rednecks who have historically felt threatened by women, minorities and gays. Frightened, frightening white boys. How else do you deal with such ignorance and ilk. Besides hope that they are all eventually vascetomized. With ridicule and scorn. It's easy. It's fun. It's appropriate.

Yet. For the 28 years that I had children in my home, I did not own a TV. Why, you might ask? Answer: Would you want an open sewer line running through your living room? Oh, was it because of the violence and sex that is so prevalent on television? No, that wasn't the issue. Three reasons primarily.

1. TV is about repetition. You see the same constant assortment of characters and issues repeatedly presented day after day, week after week.

2. TV offers simplistic answers (ads & programming) to serious problems, with unimaginative stereotypes filling in for humanity. In 22 minutes, complex issues are presented, reduced and resolutely resolved. It's fairy tales and illusions.

3. Time spent in front of the tube means time not spent reading or doing other endeavors (that I value). And as a parent, that is my prerogative.

What set me off on how white boys are being portrayed is a recent DiGiorno pizza advertisement on TV.

Scene: Four "soft" men consisting of two pudgy black sidekicks and two pudgy, balding smudges passing for white boys are sitting in the living room eating pizza. They are shoveling in the food faster than you can say "DiGiorno!" The camera pulls back and there are huge muddy footprints everywhere in a room covered in beige carpeting. Obviously, these men had just walked in, sat down and started eating pizza.

The buzz-kill of a wife enters and in essence asks, "Hon, how could you be so damned stupid and inconsiderate? We just had the carpets cleaned!"

The pudgy, balding white hubby says, "Dear, it was the pizza delivery man who did it!"

Snort. Gobble, gobble. Snort. Hah! Hah! Are you laughing yet? They give her a bite of the pizza and it simply couldn't be store bought because it's soooo delicious!

The wife exclaims, "Mmm-mmm good," and seemingly forgets that her husband is a childish, lying, inconsiderate moron.

Oh, you mean that pudgy smudge of a white boy husband passing as a man?

Yea, he's on TV all the time.