Angry in the Great White North

Peter Regan was offended by the way RONA portrayed men in a commercial:

Canada's advertising watchdog, Advertising Standards Canada, has ruled a TV commercial promoting RONA, the chain of building-supply stores, is unfit for Canadian audiences because it discriminates against men.

The ruling follows a complaint by a Calgary man who saw the ad on the HGTV channel and was offended that it suggested all husbands are layabouts. The commercial features a female customer going into a RONA store with an imaginary complaint called "homestressidous."

A sympathetic female clerk suggests the customer's husband never helps around the house. The customer agrees and the clerk says: "That's okay. They (husbands) are all like that."

Peter Regan, the single parent who complained about the ad, said he found it offensive and part of a pattern of TV commercials that portray men as "losers."

The portrayal of the buffoon husband who taxes the superhuman patience of the near-perfect wife has a long tradition in television. It has been a staple for as long the radical feminist movement has wielded power. In pre-feminist days, you had I Love Lucy, in which the wife was as amusingly incompetent, if not more, than the other characters in the story. In recent years, the model of the typical husband has been drawn from programs like Home Improvement or According to Jim. Women, and particularly women who chose to be married, as seriously flawed characters worthy of mockery? Off hand, I can think of two shows that have done that, both from Fox -- Married With Children and The Family Guy.

Having said that, even these programs allocate near equal "wacky" status to both the husband the wife. I can't think of a program in the last thirty years that portrays a wife as the sole source of incompetence in a household, a constant challenge to the husband. There may have been some shows like that, but I can easily name a dozen shows where husbands were the source of all the comic incompetence.

But here's the thing that Regan and other men have to understand. Respect is not accorded to groups, but to individuals. Regan is worried about his son:

"The average Canadian father is a pretty decent human being. This portrayal of men as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals or habitual lazy drunkards robs our boys and families of role models."

Regan, father of a 10-year-old son, said RONA's unwillingness to understand the "bigger picture" pushed him to complain.

I have never reconsidered my choices in role models because of how an archetype was portrayed on television. I'm also certain that all the efforts of feminist organizations to scrub the media clean of nearly all portrayals of women as anything but strong and independent characters with virtually no flaws or faults have done nothing help any individual woman earn a spot as a role model to any young boy or girl.

In the same way I am certain that if I am a role model for my kids, it is because of my actions and my character. A portrayal of a man as a layabout on a commercial won't recast me in that role in the eyes of others.

If they see me as a layabout, it's because I choose to act as a layabout, and nothing else.

In fact, I might suggest that an unflattering portrayal of men on television just enhances my reputation. By setting low expectations, all I have to do is change a light bulb without cutting power to the entire block in order to look good.

Too subtle? Maybe. Certainly a dumb ol' man like myself wouldn't think of something like that, would he?

By making it politically incorrect to create a fictionalized family in which the woman is the sole source of humour based on incomptence and laziness, feminists have eliminated 50% of the humour in family sitcoms. That means men have had to carry the entire load for making audiences laugh. That's what unfair, in my view.

P.S. I should take a moment to applaud Advertising Standards Canada. Though I think the whole question of role models in sitcoms and humorous TV spots is silly, the watchdog group has acted with consistency. It's nice to know that men can get the same sort of pointless protection from well meaning busybodies that women and other groups have come to expect.