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Bad dads, badder TV
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National Review reviews a new reality show that’s something like Dog the Bounty Hunter meets, well, meets deadbeat dads. The show is called Bad Dads, where a bounty hunter finds deadbeats behind on their child support and busts some heads, metaphorically speaking.
Bad Dads is just the latest insult to men and especially fathers who feel, appropriately, that they’ve been maligned and minimized through television programming and advertising. In sitcoms, men are typically buffoons. And fathers, if they exist, are inept and unreliable, while Mom is a paragon of virtue and competence. Television executives and advertisers may profit from such “entertainment,” but who’s having fun? Apparently, women are. Four out of five network sitcom viewers are female.
It might be justice for the families who need that money, but it’s just more injustice to the institution of fatherhood. But fathers have no one to blame but themselves. Be a good dad. It’s hard to do, and not very good television.
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Don’t blame racism
4 out of 5 sitcoms viewers are women? I don’t know why I question this but it does make sense. Do women use up all their humor on stupid tv programs and then have none left for their husbands? I feel a need for a reminder for women who forget that:
“There can be no love without humor.”
I get annoyed by the commercials that portray husbands/dads as lazy, stupid, sexist pigs. A lot seem to be food and beverage commercials. One that comes to mind is for Digorno (sp?) Pizza. The husband is relaxing in the lawn with his friends, fakes a call to the pizza delivery service and actually calls his wife in the house and demands a pizza be brought to them. “Chop, Chop!”
Please.
I’ve always found “Everybody loves Raymond” insulting. I thought that was one of the more insulting sitcoms on TV. But yeah, a lot of the programs and commercials are just as insulting to men.
Everybody Loves Raymond tends to reflect everyone involved as having negative character traits, not just the males. It seems needlessly negative to me, but at least it’s pretty equal.
When fathers are portrayed poorly in media, the diminished perception of family life and involvement from ALL parts of the family continues to be buried. The bar is already low, and we continue to lower it.
As with all former taboo’s, deadbeat dads will someday enjoy safe harbor in the American Psychiatric Institute’s list of normative behaviors. /SARC
Bad Dads, Bad TV? Nonsense. I’ve learned all of my parenting from TV Dads.
I strive to be enthusiastic, supportive, and fashionable - like Mike Brady.
I’m hard working (and frisky) - like Howard Cunningham.
I’m thoughtful and philosophical - like Tom Corbett (Eddie’s Father).
I often use my sense of humor to fix things - like Cliff Huxtable.
I strive to be strong with a sense of righteousness - like Ben Cartwright.
I’m a firm, but measured disciplinarian - like Ward Cleaver. (and I’m never un-necessarily hard on the Beaver.)
Flaws and all, I love (and I am loved) unconditionally - like Herman Munster.
I try to be humble and keep it simple - like Andy Taylor.
Cosby played a good dad and his show was very popular.
What about deadbeat moms? My ex has not paid me in 7 years no one seems to care.
I do love how we bemoan how everything is worse than it was before … Sitcom Dads today are different than Darrin Stephens (Bewitched) how? Or from Jackie Gleason’s dad, how? Or from Ricky on Lucy’s show or … come on.
And Travis makes a good point.
JP,
Problem is a lack of alliteration. Maybe you could start something like “monster moms” or “miserly moms”?
Television sucks. Sitcoms always portray the men as fools, the kids as smart-alecks, and the women as got-it-all-together-saviors.
This show is just another assault on men from the castrated femi-nazis that run Hollywood.
Travis #6 - Your TV dads were from decades ago. Got any recent ones?
TV is mostly commercials with an occasional segment where dads are portrayed badly. Practically every children’s movie portrays a bad workaholic dad who puts work over family. No thanks are given for paying the bills.
Dad’s who watch sports are blasted endlessly about erectile dysfunction and beer. Apparently dads aren’t cognitive enough to realize that one causes the other.
Wha?! Huh?!? Beer causes erectile dysfunction?
My pet peeve is advertising. I saw an ad for something that showed mom ready to go to work in her business suit, the child ready for school and dad in a white bathrobe with a cup of coffee in his hand. It was an ad for something I went into that store to purchase. I left the store and have yet to purchase that item anywhere.
Dav, You misunderstood Xion’s post. The watching sports causes the erectile dysfunction. Beer is OK.
I’ve never understood why Cosby was set up as the perfect TV dad. Sure, he was better than most. I only watched a couple dozen episodes, but it seemed to me after a while that the consistent pattern was that Cosby would set up his kids to fail at something (being embarrassed in front of friends or family), and then make fun of them when they did. Once in a while the kids got their turn to have the last laugh.
I don’t watch much TV, and so this kind of stuff jumps out at me. And maybe most of the episodes I saw were from a low season or two. But it seemed like most of the humor was cruel and juvenile, and not exemplary family life.
Married with Children - Both parents were bafoons.
“But fathers have no one to blame but themselves.”
Mr. Scott Key: not true. Divorced fathers are the actual target of hundreds of paid professionals putting out anti-father propaganda with little concern for the truth.
There is a huge propaganda machine operating with tax-payer dollars to vilify divorced fathers. Our tax dollars pay for child-support bureaucracies in 50 states. These bastions of buffoonery often have terrible records, but they are never ever called to account. We pay for hundreds of public relations people–on the state payrolls and as contractors–who send out press releases about the arrest of child support delinquent fathers. Our tax dollars also pay the salaries of buffoonish prosecutors who are always willing to set up photo ops showing “deadbeats” being arrested. Remember Mike Nifong, and his sense of integrity? The “we crack down on deadbeats” DAs are usually in the same low league.
In fact, there are few real deadbeats at all. The deadbeat dad is mostly a fable–a nasty anti-father fairy tale. Most men arrested for child support arrearages are simply very poor.
This doesn’t stop the posturing special prosecutors from their march to the front pages of the local papers.
Mr.Key, are you aware that there is a 2,000 person privately owned company in Colorado that collects child support? And there are several others. The child support system is a huge bureaucracy, almost a gulag, answering to no one, never audited, and possessing more more paid full time public relations people than AP has reporters.
Fathers need not blame themselves. They are, in fact, the subject of a persecution and propaganda war paid for with our tax dollars. We ought to demand an end to it. Stephen Baskerville’s new book “Taken Into Custody” is must reading. It’s powerful muckraking about a scandal that the American press rarely looks at, because the press is in bed with the PR people of the child-support agencies and the DAs. The PR people give the newspapers cheap stories–easy photo ops–and the newspapers just go along with the PR people and never look behind the curtain at the real scandal, which is the performance of these agencies.
In Texas, where the state atty general is elected, a common pattern emerges. Just a few months before the election the AG will announce additional funding for Child Support Enforcemt.
What seems comical is had these men stayed in committed marriages, there is no doubt in my mind that they would not be spending as much per child as the courts have imposed on them.
And of course, there are few deadbeat dads who make the income of megalawyers or brain surgeons.