STUPID DAD COMMERCIALS
If there is one reason, above all the other many reasons, that television SUCKS, it has to be the way that they portray men, especially dads. There is no better example of this than the “Stupid Dad” or “Stupid Husband” commercial. I’ve written about this before on my blog, it was probably a couple of years ago, and it hasn’t gotten any better. I don’t know, I was hoping that it would.
I don’t know why advertisers think that this is a good approach to selling their product. I’m the one that makes most of the major purchases in the house AND I buy most of the groceries. The “Stupid Dad” commercial is the one thing that will immediately stop me from doing business with any company that has one.
My original blog post was from August 06, 2009 and I’ve included it below:
“Stupid Dad commercials are nothing new and I’m not the first to rant about them. Just Google “Stupid Dad Commercials” you’ll see plenty of links. It’s just hitting closer to home now that my kids are being exposed to them.
T.V. shows aren’t any better. Look at Homer Simpson, the Family Guy, George Lopez, Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond, According to Jim, on and on, etc…
Off the top of my head the only two TV shows in the last 20 years I can come up with that had strong male role models are “Cosby” and “Married With Children’s” Al Bundy. Al might not have been the brightest bulb on the tree, nobody on that show was, but Al didn’t put up with being pushed around.
Why is it so popular with ad companies and other media outlets to make dad look like a complete idiot on T.V. shows and in their marketing? The setup usually consists of smart-ass children and a much wiser and more worldly wife that treat Dad like crap or show his inferior I.Q.
I thought we had enough of this kind of thing in the seventies with actors like Alan Alda, John Ritter, and Richard Dreyfus. This is why we no-longer have good male role models as fathers, political leaders, sports figures and heads of dozens of other important institutions. And when the entertainment media does have a strong male role model it’s usually in some video game and the model is not just bad but horribly bad. Extreme violence, extreme sexism, sadism, crooks are good – cops are bad, you name it, it’s in there.”
I put a sample commercial at the top of this post. I know it won’t get any better.