Double Standard (or, "White Male = Devil")

If you’re a white male, then your every action is potentially (nay, probably) motivated by some form of bigotry, bias, racism, sexism, or whatever the current -ism of the moment happens to be. So goes the politically correct line of thought in America and much of the world today. That’s why, for example, the only kind of person you’ll ever see being made fun of in a TV commercial is a white male.

Tonight I saw a commercial for Viactiv. (It’s a calcium supplement for women.) Guess what the last line in the commercial is? "Because women should get exactly what they want."

Can you imagine what would happen if a commercial said, "because men should get exactly what they want"? Every feminist on the planet would instantaneously simultaneously spontaneously combust, and the Earth would crash into the sun.

Posted by Anthony on Jan 18, 2005 | 5 replies
Filed under: Politics, Stupidity

Comments:

01. Jan 18, 2005 at 07:46am by kaiser:

Affirmative action really pisses me off too. In this day and age, most people don’t hire based on race or sex. The people that do live in the south or are older males that haven’t hit retirement yet. It irritates me that 2 people that are perfectly qualified for a job can have one deciding factor: race/gender. Even worse, a white male that is perfectly suited for a job may not get it because the company has not fulfilled its quota for african american women. An african american woman is the only non-white non-male candidate but is completely unfit for the position. "You’re hired".

I am not saying that "minorities" cannot do a good job. I am just irritated that people don’t get hired based on credentials. Credentials are what is important to doing a good job. That is what business is all about.

BTW I quote when I say "minorites" because I don’t believe in "minorities" anymore. "Minorities" should not believe they are "minorities" anymore. I believe that what is keeping racism alive is the few white people that are still living in the backwoods or the people that feel victim of racism of the past. I look around at the people on campus at Pitt and I think, "Wow, look at all the interracial couples and even just groups of friends and how diverse they are." 5-10 years ago they would not be hanging around in public. This is because racism is something of the past for our generation (Generation Y or whatever you want to call it). We see people for who they are.

02. Jan 18, 2005 at 08:10am by kaiser:

But in reply to your advertisement racism thing:

The Ad Council (anti-drug, anti-racism commercials) has this ad on launchcast that has an african american fraternity talking about their pledges:
Click on Frat at right hand frame

One pledge is white. Some of the guys are saying he plays good basketball and he helps out in the community. One of the guys chimes in and says, "why do they think if they can shoot hoops they can be one of us?" The other guys basically call him a racist after that. The best part is that the commercial narrator at the end says basically the same thing I said at the end of my previous post. He says in order to stop racism you have to stop it where it starts. That was the best commercial the Ad Council put out since that girl was going ballistic and smashing up her kitchen with a frying pan because of "what drugs do to your family and friends and your life".

Now that is the only commercial I can think of that can counter your argument so I think yours is still a strong argument. I just wanted to mention this commercial because it is a powerful message that I try to get across to people that don’t understand why racism still exists today.

03. Jan 18, 2005 at 08:26am by Anthony:

So I tried to view that video (at the Frat link) using Firefox on Linux, then Windows, then IE on Windows, and every time all it does is print this image:

They print an image of a fake video player if you use a browser that they didn’t feel like supporting. Nice. I mean... gay.

Is there any way someone could right-click and do "View Source" and find the URL of the actual video file and post that here? (It’s probably an mpg, avi, wmv, mov or swf file.)

04. Jan 18, 2005 at 01:13pm by Rolly:

It’s not a video, just an audio clip.

05. Jan 18, 2005 at 02:34pm by Anthony:

Oh yeah, duh, launchcast is audio.

So...

Can anyone post the URL for the *audio* file, then?