Women’s Violence Against Men Still Acceptable – Videos

 As Valentines Day approaches, every man will be reminded that if he forgets this special day, he will suffer dire consequences. But what is truly amazing his how sexist and one sided this “mutual relationship” day really is.

In our present environment which stresses gender equality, almost all Valentine’s Day ads will portray the man doing something special for the woman in his life – rare is the ad which shows the woman going beyond her means to please the man in her life. Also consider that when advertisers develop an ad which depicts a spouse forgetting Valentines Day, or depicts a partner being cheap on this special day, it will ALWAYS be the male put in this humiliating position.

Women consistently gripe about how females are portrayed in the media, but they conveniently ignore how men are negatively portray in the media also. Why is it women cry about all the inequalities in the world when it affects THEM, but do not muster any ounce of energy to address the inequities faced by men? The paradigm of Valentines Day and corresponding silence from the “gender equality” (RE: women) appears to validate my opinion of how selfish the women’s movement has become. These self proclaimed “humanist” care only about themselves. If they truly cared about equality for everyone, they would protest these disparaging stereotypes and portrayals of males in society – but they don’t.

Check out how the disturbing reality of gender violence is handled by advertisers and the media. 

In this first video the man can’t make it home to spend Valentines Day with his partner. He’s stuck working late. Her response? Take Valentines Day to him at the office. Sounds great, looks great! But watch until the climax for the advertiser’s “humorous” ending.

 

 

In this next video, a misunderstanding by the man’s wife causes her to assault him. No apology, no mention that if this was real life, her actions would be considered an act of domestic violence. In our present society, men are warned of the consequences of their anger and violence towards women. However, women are taught – with the medias help – that violence against men is acceptable, and hey, it’s also a great form of amusement.

 

 

If you think I’m over extending myself, watch this next video. While on live TV, a woman finds it perfectly acceptable to harass and assault the male reporter. She does this, knowing that society will not hold her accountable for her violent actions. It is only labeled violence when men assault women. When women assault men it’s called “humor”, which is why I found this video while searching for “funny” videos.

 

 

So this is the new gender equality? This behavior is what society piously proclaims we should be advocating? Also, the most vocal and influencial feminist do not find the many examples of female-on-male violence in the media disturbing  judging by their silence?

Count me out of this form of equality. I finished grammar school a long time ago – my thinking has matured since then.

 

Contact:

soltys.joe@gmail.com

http://jsoltys.wordpress.com

Photo Courtesy of: stockxchng.com

Finally – The End of the Sexist DART Ads

For those of you who read this blog, you know that I was involved in a protest against some sexist domestic violence ads that were displayed for several weeks on buses owned by Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Created and funded by The Family Place, a local domestic violence shelter, the ads appeared as shown below:

 

 

The ads are disturbing and misleading because they promote the image that all men and fathers are inherently violent and should not, or cannot be trusted in a relationship. Also the ads ignore the fact that most research concerning domestic violence shows unequivocally that women are as likely as men to instigate physical violence, yet these ads do not portray that reality.

Glenn Sacks initiated the protest campaign, and now that it has ended, he had this say about its success on his blog:

DART Campaign Wrap-up

As many of you know, the anti-father Dallas domestic violence bus ads we protested came down this week (11/30). While the ads remained up a few weeks longer than we desired, overall our campaign was very successful, and I am grateful that so many of you participated.

Among the campaign’s achievements:

1) Widespread, positive media coverage which allowed us to educate the public on domestic violence and child abuse. Coverage included CNN, The Associated Press, FOX, CBS, hundreds of radio stations throughout the country, and many newspapers. This was particularly remarkable considering we launched the Campaign seven days before the presidential election.

2) To its credit, The Family Place, the prominent Dallas-area domestic violence service provider which placed the controversial ads on DART buses, backed away from the gender exclusivity which was previously prominent in their public materials. They changed several areas of their website to specifically include male victims, and issued a statement that “We are not a male-bashing organization. Our services support all victims—male and female, children and adults.” Some examples are here and here. I commend them for this.

3) A sub-group of our protesters who I selected called over 50 of The Family Place’s financial contributors to express our concerns about the ads. Most contributors said they sympathized with us, and many told us they thought the ads and the subsequent protest were an embarrassment to The Family Place. Many contacted Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink with their concerns.

Several of The Family Place’s financial contributors withdrew or reduced the financial gifts they planned for the end-of-the-year giving season. I don’t say this with pleasure–I would have preferred that The Family Place do the right thing from the beginning rather than lose the funding.

4) Father-bashing is so prevalent in the media today because there is little political cost to be paid for doing it. We launched the campaign in part because we wanted to show that there is a political cost to demeaning fathers, and in that regard we more than succeeded.

5) We compiled an impressive endorsers list which included some of the world’s leading authorities on domestic violence, as well as many other experts, media figures, and prominent citizens.

6) Our efforts generated 10,000 calls, letters, and faxes.

7) Our contingent was gender-balanced, including many women who opposed anti-father stereotyping and the ads’ noxious message to boys.

One of the Dallas journalists who covered the campaign told me “You guys got 98% of what you wanted.” I think 98% is a little high, but we certainly did well. Both I and Fathers & Families–my partner in the DART campaign–again thank all who participated.

 

And it should be noted that two well respected writers have recently commented that the DART protest campaign was an example to everyone with respect to how a protest campaign should be accomplished.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist whose columns appear in nearly 200 newspapers, the author of three books, and a frequent TV and radio commentator. Glenn Reynolds is a writer with www.Instapundit.com, which is perhaps the most-read political blog in the US, and he is an author and frequent TV commentator.
When discussing the recent actions of those protesting the Prop 8 controversy, Reyonlds had this to say:

I’ve actually got an example of how to do this right…Glenn Sacks’ campaign against some of the ads on public transit in Dallas…ads about domestic violence…
They didn’t try to get anybody fired but they contacted them [sponsors of The Family Place] and asked them, “Did you realize that your money is supporting these ads? Is this what you want to do?”
They made a very big point of being very polite about it and not making any threats. They did get some action and did it without trying to get anybody fired or booted from their jobs or doing anything vicious.
That’s an example of how it ought to be done. That’s something that people on the right should be looking at…for the [next four years.]

Malkin added:

Glenn Sacks has been very effective in getting his message out and rectifying unbalances in media coverage and advertising. You would hope that [other activists] would take a cue and a clue from this type of campaign.

I would like to thank my readers who took the time to make their voices heard on this issue.

(My most recent broadcast of “An With Joe Soltys” is availabe for listening. During this past week’s show, I discussed bad women, and vent about the ugly side of femininity vs. masculinity. Click here to listen.)

soltys.joe@gmail.com

http://jsoltys.wordpress.com

Please Join Me In Protesting Sexist Domestic Violence Ads

The Dallas Area Rapid Transit in coordination with The Family Place, a Dallas Domestic Violence service provider began running domestic violence prevention ads on DART buses that openly discriminate against men and fathers, and mislead the public into believing the myth that men are almost always the perpetrators of violence and women are most always the victims.

Men’s issue writer and advocate Glen Sacks along with Dr. Ned Holstein, Executive Director of Fathers & Families have organized a protest to these disturbing ads.

I’ve posted the campaign’s webpage below. Please join me in protesting this type of discrimination against men and fathers, and protest the damage done to all victims of domestic violence by promoting false and misleading information.

Protest Father-Bashing
Domestic Violence Ads!

Several hundred Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) buses feature misleading, father-bashing ads purporting to address the serious issue of domestic violence.

One ad depicts a happy little girl with the message “One day my husband will kill me.” Another shows a smiling boy with the message “When I grow up, I will beat my wife.”

The ads are, to put it bluntly, hate speech against fathers.

We want DART to take down these anti-father ads. To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

To depict only males as perpetrators of domestic violence, and only females as victims, is a severe distortion. DV research clearly establishes that men account for half of all DV victims and incur a third of DV-related injuries, as women often employ the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s strength.

In earlier years, it was common to see crime stories presented as if only African-Americans and Latinos were perps, and whites their only victims. We now recognize that these distortions are bigoted. DART’s ads are the same kind of distortions, only the “perps” are now dads.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

The offending ads were placed on the buses by The Family Place, a Dallas Domestic Violence service provider. Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink told Fox News in Dallas that says she designed the ads to provoke, saying “I hope you are offended.”

Flink is practically daring the fatherhood movement to respond, and assumes that domestic violence organizations can insult men with impunity. As a general rule, she has been correct–the domestic violence establishment, much of it funded with your tax dollars, has been allowed to get away with serving the public the false woman-as-victim/man-as-monster domestic violence model.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

DART Buses & Trains serve a total of 10 million commuters per month. To read the Associated Press’ and others’ coverage of the ads, click here.

The message of the DART ads is clear–kids need to be afraid of fathers. Boys need to be afraid to grow up to be like dad, and girls need to fear marrying a man like dad.

Dads-as-Monsters ads such as these influence our popular culture, our news media, our legislators, and our family law courts. If you’re a divorced dad who can only see his kids a few days a month, or who’s the victim of false accusations of abuse, ads like these are one reason.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

Two major billboard companies–Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor–have already rejected these ads. Jodi Senese of CBS said the ads “can be both misleading and disturbing.”

There are three ads in this series–the two mentioned above and also one apparently gender-neutral ad which discusses the issue of domestic violence and teen suicide. We have no problem with the third, but we want the first two–”One day my husband will kill me” and “When I grow up, I will beat my wife”–removed.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

We abhor domestic violence and child abuse in all forms, and give credit to agencies like The Family Place which help victims. However, by failing (or refusing) to recognize male victims of domestic violence, the domestic violence establishment and The Family Place harm male victims and their children.

Society once swept domestic violence under the rug, marginalizing abused women and their children. As California’s Third District Court of Appeal recognized in a recent decision, today male victims and their children are marginalized. These DART ads are part of that marginalization.

Internationally-recognized domestic violence expert John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, explains:

“Men account for half of all DV victims and incur a third of DV-related injuries. Ignoring female-on-male violence inhibits our efforts to combat domestic violence.”

In the column to the right we provide quotes from numerous internationally-respected domestic violence authorities, all of whom, attest that domestic violence is committed by both men and women.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

To learn more about the ads, click here.

We oppose DART’s Anti-Father Bus Ads Because:

• To depict only males as perpetrators of domestic violence, and only females as victims, is a severe distortion of domestic violence research. A mountain of DV research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s strength.The most recent large-scale study of domestic violence was published in the American Journal of Public Health last year. The researchers analyzed data concerning 11,370 respondents. According to the researchers, “[H]alf of [violent relationships] were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.” (This study is illustrated in the diagram at right from the Psychiatric News, 8/3/07).A quarter of the women surveyed admitted perpetrating violence, and when the violence involved both parties, women were more likely to have been the first to strike.Such findings are consistent with decades of domestic violence research. The National Institute of Mental Health funded and oversaw two of the largest studies of domestic violence ever conducted, both of which found equal rates of abuse between husbands and wives.
  

  New California Appeal Court Ruling: ‘Domestic Violence Is a Serious Problem for both Women and Men’

  “California domestic violence laws violate men’s rights because they provide state funding only for women and their children who use shelters and other programs, a state appeals court has ruled. “The decision by the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento requires the programs to be available to male as well as female victims of domestic violence… “Justice Fred Morrison said in Tuesday’s 3-0 ruling, the state acknowledges that ‘domestic violence is a serious problem for both women and men.’” –(San Francisco Chronicle, 10/16/08)

  California State Long Beach University professor Martin Fiebert maintains an online bibliography summarizing 219 scholarly investigations, with an aggregate sample size exceeding 220,000, which concludes “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”

  Nor is this violence trivial. A meta-analytic review of 552 domestic violence studies published in the Psychological Bulletin found that 38% of the physical injuries in heterosexual domestic assaults are suffered by men.

  Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling of the University of South Alabama says that as she and other researchers grappled with this research, “Every time we tried to say that women’s intimate partner abuse is different than men’s, the evidence did not support it.”

  According to Dr. Donald Dutton, author of Rethinking Domestic Violence, research shows that domestic violence is actually more common in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships. For example, one study of 1,100 lesbian or bisexual women who are in abusive lesbian relationships found that the women were more likely to have experienced violence in their previous relationships with women than in their previous relationships with men.

  Domestic violence service sometimes providers justify their exclusion of male victims by citing crime and/or crime survey statistics which show that most reports of domestic violence are by women. Dr. Dutton explains:

  “Domestic violence ‘research’ has been misleading, in that data has been extracted from crime reports and/or crime victim surveys – in which men underreport more than women – and have been publicized as indicating domestic violence is a gender issue (male-perpetrator/female-victims).

  “In fact, when larger surveys with representative samples are examined, perpetration of domestic violence perpetration is slightly more common for females…”

  In the column to the right we provide quotes from numerous internationally-respected domestic violence authorities, all of whom, attest that domestic violence is committed by both men and women.

  To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

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• The Ads Send the Message That Kids Must Fear Dads, When Most Child Abuse and Parental Murder of Children Is Committed by Mothers, not Fathers The child victims of male violence depicted in the DART ads are, in fact, most likely to be abused by a woman, not a man.According to the most recent data available from the US Department of Health and Human Services, mothers are more likely to commit physical child abuse, emotional maltreatment, and neglect than fathers. The only form of child abuse fathers are more likely to commit is the one that’s the most infrequent—child sexual abuse.

  

  According to Child Maltreatment 2006 (pictured), a report by the Federal Administration for Children & Families, leaving aside killings by nonparents or by mothers and fathers acting together, mothers committed almost three-quarters of the parental murders of children. If one looks only at murders committed by mothers and fathers acting alone, the ratio is over 2 to 1 committed by mothers.

  

  Leaving aside child abuse by nonparents or by mothers and fathers acting together, mothers committed almost three-quarters of child abuse.

  If one looks only at child abuse committed by mothers and fathers acting alone, the ratio is 2.3 to 1 committed by mothers.

  The data cited here are raw statistics, and all raw statistics are subject to various biases and influences. However, they do very much contradict the DART ads’ de facto claim that it’s fathers and only fathers who are a threat to their children.

  To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

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Fathers & Families, a national shared parenting organization, and Los Angeles journalist/radio commentator Glenn Sacks are partnering in a campaign to ask DART to remove these anti-father ads.

To send a protest email and fax to DART executives, click here.

Contact DART Executives & Ask Them to Remove These Anti-Father Ads

Below are the phone numbers, fax numbers, and email addresses for DART’s leading executives. I suggest campaign supporters email and fax all of them by clicking here, and also call the executives listed below.

If the intended party is not available, which will often be the case, please leave a short, clear message telling them that you want DART to remove these ads. Leave your name, phone number and email address. Please remember to always be polite, respectful, and to the point.

Let us know what happened when you called by clicking here.

Running these campaigns takes time and money–to make a tax-deductible contribution to support our efforts, click here.

To discuss the DART campaign on the campaign blog, click here.

Many of our supporters live in the Dallas area and use DART. If you are one, please contact us by clicking here.

Best Wishes,

Glenn Sacks
Dr. Ned Holstein, Executive Director of Fathers & Families

Contact:

soltys.joe@gmail.com

http://jsoltys.wordpress.com

Advertisers Trying To Get It – From A Woman

   There has been much debate about how advertisers portray men and fathers in the media. For sometime now men’s rights and father’s rights groups have been creating awareness and engaging in protests campaigns in an effort to derail the common default logic that the best way to reach the male consumer is to portray him as dumb, selfish, immature, irresponsible, inferior to women, and most disturbing, show numerous acts of physical violence upon him, particularly by women, as standard humor that leads to increased sales.

Besides the obvious absurdity in the advertisers logic, a strong argument for the men’s and father’s protest groups is based in solid logic; would advertisers use the same approach for women? Of course not. The public outrage would cripple their image and strangle their sales revenue. Advertisers inherently know that the risk vs. rewards in portraying women in such a manner is not good business.

But for men, advertisers throw simple logic under the table, and proceed with a logic similar of someone suffering from serious head trauma. The pendulum swings to the extreme opposite of female consumer rationale, and dives head first into a world where humiliation and loss of dignity are revered as the gateway to the elusive and capricious emotional mosaic of the male consumer. Advertisers believe his attention and loyalty is derived from polarizing his humanity, demonstrating to him that he is not just a human being who makes mistakes, but he and his manhood, as a whole, are delegated as an unequivocal mistake, which society reluctantly tolerates.

Advertisers defend this type of male advertising by consistently referring to the fact that their focus groups approved it. Well, excuse me for being such a prick and placing the whole arduous logic thing back in their laps, but just because a focus group approves of something, does it automatically remove the corporations involved from any responsibility?  Years ago in this country, a focus group would have approved without hesitation an advertiser’s campaign of dressing white people up in black face to sell products to black people. The suggestion would never leave a person’s lips today. 

Consider that a requirement in today’s business schools is to teach diversity issues, cultural differences, minority sensitivity issues, and ethics. And all major corporations have extensive programs and policies in place to construct a corporate culture that is aware and sensitive to these issues. So sorry corporate America, blaming focus groups for insensitive advertising is a blatant cop out. You are well aware of the intention and impact of your advertising. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the advertisers and the corporate clients for the creation and implementation of any advertising campaign, and how it will affect those in society. Both of them have the opportunity to stop careless advertising of men and fathers, and with all their education and training, it is apparent they have chosen not to.

So is progress being made? Yes it is, and a woman is leading the way. Her name is Rose Cameron and she is the “go to girl” in advertising circles when corporations want to find out how to capture the attention of the elusive male consumer.

In an article written by Jason George titled, Delivering the Male, Rose implies her skills may be the result of her attitude. She states, “I just love men.” And as senior vice president and planning director for Leo Burnett USA advertising agency, Rose found herself becoming an expert on men after the agency asked her to oversee a global study of men in 2005. What the study found was that men were becoming more insecure and confused about their roles in society as it rapidly changes. Rose says, “[Men] are losing all their institutions. All day they have to control the way they behave, and they need places to relax. Men have to decompress somewhere,”

The article notes how she applies her skills when visiting the Hooters restaurant chain. Rose says it’s success is not based on the girls. Instead, it’s a place whose careful consideration and construction in the details of the environment make men feel very comfortable and very relaxed – a place where they can be themselves.

The study she took part in showed that 74% of the men interviewed (over 2000 participated) said they could not relate to the male images portrayed in modern advertising. The study proved that advertisers were out of touch with male consumers.

The article then states these interesting facts:

According to the study, the greatest insult to a man is when someone declares that “he’ll never amount to anything” (29 percent), followed by “everyone laughs behind your back” (24 percent) and “you’re stupid” (21 percent).

Rose Cameron shows how compassion and understanding for men and fathers concerning the issues they face in their lives is the best way for advertisers to connect with them. The article gives an example of how McDonald’s used this totally “radical” approach to connect with fathers in comparison to Pizza Hut, whose similar ad used the traditional humiliation method.

Both ads used the concept of how the family responds emotionally when dad is responsible for dinner that night. The Pizza Hut spot showed the wife and children in fear of putting this responsibility in the hands of dad, and emphasizes how shocked they are that dad actually has the mental ability to bring home a dinner favorite without screwing up. The McDonald’s ad portrays fathers faced with a similar responsibility, but the emotions are different in this spot. Dad intuitively knows what pleases his family, and more importantly, the ad shows his children waiting in anticipation when dad is bringing home dinner, because to them, dad has proven himself on many occasions that he cares about his families happiness, and can be counted on to do the right thing.  

So what’s the down side to all this?

To put it bluntly, advertisers aren’t really concerned with how men or fathers are portrayed in their advertising. They’re only concerned with how to connect with them on some level in order to sell products for their clients. Rose Cameron’s work to change the thinking of advertisers concerning men and fathers began, and is still, predicated on the success of sales revenue coming from a particular demographic, not out of a concerned corporate consciousness. The 2005 men’s study was initiated not because advertisers felt an uncomfortable feeling about their work, or felt they were becoming morally or ethically shallow. It was initiated to address sagging numbers for a particular demographic. In my opinion, it appears the bottom line – the spreadsheet- is a greater priority than simple respect and ethical integrity towards the consumer for advertisers and their clients.

I’m not attacking Rose’s work. Sshe properly demonstrates to advertisers that men and fathers are more than just data/numbers, and are actually human-beings who are well aware on some level of society’s lack of sympathy, understanding, or interest in their well-being, particularly when juxtaposed to women’s issues.

So what’s the next step?

Keep putting pressure on advertisers to change. Keep writing letters. Keep reminding them that us men and fathers are more than their narrow judgements of us.
And remember, it will take time. Be patient with them.
These people have proven they’re a little slow when it comes to understanding what we want.

Contact:

soltys.joe@gmail.com

http://jsoltys.wordpress.com

Photo courtesy of Free Images

Yes, I Am An Extremist

  Since I have been indirectly labeled an extremist, I feel this qualifies me to be in the position to reach out to others who may be the same.

This is how I felt after reading Jonah Bloom’s article at Glenn Sack’s blog. Jonah is Executive Editor and writer for Advertising Age, a weekly marketing and media publication. Mr. Bloom wrote a column titled, “When It Comes to Whining About Ads, Father Knows Best” with the sub-title “Extremist Group’s Rants Shouldn’t Detract Ways advertising Must Be Held Accountable”

Well, beginning an article that labels men and fathers – who are conscious about how the media and advertising agencies portray them - as “extremist” is a little extreme itself, isn’t it? In this day and age, when someone labels a class of people as an ”extremist group”, it has the tendency to imply radicals who fly loaded passenger jets into skyscrapers. Obviously Mr. Bloom is skilled in extremist hyperbole himself.  

But it gets worse.

Mr. Bloom’s article centers on the number of men and fathers who voiced complaints and opinions about the recent Superbowl commercials and the consistent double-standard they’ve felt in the media for some time.  Advertisers are very conscious not to use visuals or language that might appear derogatory, degrading, or insensitive to certain groups of people in our society. However, there is one group that is always the exception – men.
Males as a whole are still the largest class of people that can be openly discriminated against without fear of serious reprisal. Portraying men as dumb, insensitive, childish, or on the receiving end of “humorous” violence, usually of the genital kind, can be seen in many forms of media. The particular commercial used as an example in Mr. Bloom’s article was the one produced by Pepsi which showed Justin Timberlake being mysteriously dragged towards a young woman drinking a Pepsi product.  The whole commercial consisted of him enduring a brutal, endless stream of violent acts upon his person, including the proverbial “crotch crushing” present in so many forms of media.

The protesters were questioning this apathy towards males in the media, including advertising, when compared to women or other groups. I assume Mr. Bloom would be offended by a commercial that shows women enduring numerous episodes of genital and bodily violence in the name of humor. I say ”assuming” because ironically, even though Mr. Bloom opened up his article with an e-mail received about this double-standard, he fails to seriously address it. Strangely, he avoids the whole argument concerning the disparity in violence directed at males and females in the name of humor even though it is the opening topic. He dismisses the commercial’s violence as simply “Justin Timberlake bumping into stuff”, and labels the men and fathers who voiced their concern as “unhinged individuals with too much time on their hands.”

While he chose a road of indolence when trying to comprehend and analyse the argument presented to him, he sure was tenacious and laborious in itemizing and analysing those who dared voice their opinion. Here is a sample of the words he chose to describe the men, fathers, and environment they create by protesting the negative images portrayed by the media and advertisers:

extremist, lunatic, assault, gaggle of men, loose coalition, attacked, tortured, trumped-up charges, acolytes, cheap, backlash, endlessly parsing, unhinged individuals with too much time on their hands

Let me just tell you Mr. Bloom, as a card carrying member of the extremist groups you mention, I am very upset by your choice of words. I am seriously dismayed that your extremist language is much more experienced than mine or my cohorts. Your choice of words makes me and my cohorts look like ”extremists lite”.

He continues his harangue, and towards the end of the article he really shows his skills in the hypocrisy department. Invoking a pious guilt trip, Mr. Bloom thinks that there are more important issues within the advertising industry other than worrying about the negative images of men and fathers. He says the most pressing issues in the industry right now are: financial institutions with aggressive campaigns pushing credit to consumers whose debt loads are already crushing; advertisers spending billions to support an Olympics in a country with an abysmal human-rights record;  companies with shocking environmental records making claims to environmental friendliness; the merits and pitfalls of advertising drugs directly to consumers; and that presidential primaries could come down to who spent the most on ads.

So I took a look at some of his recent articles to gauge his concern on these issues, the information he offers, and what he is doing to challenge this dark side of the advertising world. Here is what I found:

“A-List Agencies Are More Than Just New-Biz Machines”

“Agencies Will Have to Steer Marketers Toward the Big Ideal”

“A Brief Guide to the Ins and Outs of the Ad World in Summer”

“Attract Better Marketing Talent with Better Marketing”

“The Awards Shows Need to Tear Down Silos, but It Won’t Happen”

Well, I guess he’s really busy right now. He’ll get back to those serious advertising issues as soon as he can.

I’ll admit there are probably serious issues facing advertising today, but of course in the scope of ALL things, of course one can find many ”other” issues such as, too many children starving, tragic acts of genocide, unbridled terrorism, famine, disease, and drought just to name a few. But the audacity of Mr. Bloom to use this tactic to challenge and de-value the sincerity of men and fathers who protest their negative image in various forms of media is a cop-out. It is even more offensive considering he chooses to invest the majority of his time in advertising – an industry whose sole purpose is to find ways to manipulate an individual’s psyche into believing he or she needs to purchase something they may really not need.

But I’m going to call a truce. If Mr. Bloom is willing to minimize his thoughts about men and fathers who voice their concern about their negative image in advertising and media, I’m willing to minimize my opinion about how hypocritical, self-absorbing, and narrow-minded his article is about this subject.
Who knows, maybe it will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship in which Mr. Bloom converts to the cause, and speaks  out about the negative images of men and fathers in advertising.

No. I take that back. With his sharp tongue and pen, he’s too much of a risk. With him in the group, we would run the possibility of looking like a bunch of extremist.

On the opposite side of the spectrum…

Last Thursday night I was a guest on the B-Dub At Night Radio Program. I was asked by B-Dub to talk about one of my recent columns -”I Want Success… And Exploit Myself“- and also discuss men’s issues in general. B-Dub gave myself and the discussion of men’s issues a generous amount of time on his show. A download of the complete show and my interview is available at his website.
To show my appreciation, I’ve included a link to his website on the sidebar of this blog. I would ask others who are advocates of men’s issues to check out his work and display our appreciation by listening to his show. He has shown he is friendly towards men’s issues and it would be beneficial for us to help him succeed. 
His show is on daily at 10pm eastern, except on Friday, when it starts at 12am eastern.

Contact:

http://jsoltys.wordpress.com

soltys.joe@gmail.com

Photo courtesy of : Free Photographs Network