NPO Blog Archive

Los Angeles, CA–“Background: Brandweek Magazine is one of the largest publications in the advertising world, and it has repeatedly covered the problem of anti-male advertising, as well as our efforts to combat it. To learn more about Brandweek’s commendable coverage, click here. Our campaigns include: Campaign Against Anti-Father Verizon Commercial, Campaign Against Anti-Male Advertising, Campaign Against Detroit News ‘Get Her a Gift or She”ll Give You a Black Eye” Ad and Portable On Demand Storage Decides to Remove Anti-Male Ad in Face of Protests. The Volvo/Arnold campaign referenced above was the brainchild of advertising guru Richard Smaglick of www.fathersandhusbands.org, and he worked with me on the campaign.
To learn more about the problems with the way men are portrayed in advertising, click here. Brandweek Senior Reporter Mike Beirne gets it right in his new, 2,500 word piece about men and fathers in advertising–Marketers used to venerate the father figure. So why are they making him look like such an ass? (3/3/08). Beirne discusses our campaigns against anti-male advertising and quotes several authorities in the advertising world who sympathize with us. He also details numerous anti-male/anti-father ads, largely the ones we’ve covered and criticized on this blog over the past year. The article’s only downside is Mike’s unfortunate decision to end with a piece of asininity from Mark Tungate, author of the upcoming book Branded Male: Marketing to Men: “Tungate said men should learn to take unflattering advertising images in stride. After all, he pointed out, it’s more or less their turn. “‘One day, women will be happy to be sent up, too,’ he said. ‘But right now, they’re still smarting from all the times they were made to strip in aircrafts, sprawl over car hoods or compare different types of detergent. We’ve had it our way forever, and we still get paid more. We can take a little ribbing.'”

If readers would like to write a Letter to the Editor of Brandweek and express their views about this piece (and Tungate), go to feedback@brandweek.com.

Marketers used to venerate the father figure. So why are they making him look like such an ass? By Mike Beirne (Brandweek, March 03, 2008) Advertisers have always had a treasure chest of All-American iconography to draw from, and few are as durable–one might even say sacred–as those of Life with Father. Take, for instance, the 1962 State Mutual of America ad with the photo of dad showing his little boy how to line up his tin soldiers (“Some fathers make good generals, too,” oozed the copy). There’s the classic 1950s ad from Lionel model trains showing father and son bonding at trackside below the confident caption: “One of the best ways men get to know each other.” As recently as 1994, an ad for the Krugerrand called “Generation to Generation” pictured a proud father about to give one of the famed solid-gold coins to his college-graduate son. “Maybe someday,” mused dad, “he’ll show it to his kid when he’s trying to get him to do his homework.” What a touching thought. Let’s fast-forward to someday . . .It’s exactly a decade later, 2004, and a new TV spot for Verizon DSL brings viewers into the family den during homework hour. There’s dad (who probably cashed in that Krugerrand to get the house down payment) looking over the shoulder of his young daughter as she sits before a computer. In just a moment, dad will surely lean forward with his pencil to explain that confounding trigonometry problem. But no. Unfortunately for the little girl, dad is a gaping moron. He stares saucer-eyed at the screen in utter helplessness while his progeny–tearing across the Web with her mouse–wears a look of untrammeled disgust. “Leave her alone,” barks mom, who arrives just in time to ward off the dolt she married. So much for father knowing best. Maybe Robert Young was bound to turn into Homer Simpson eventually, but nowhere is there starker evidence of just how far fathers have fallen in popular esteem than your average piece of major-brand marketing. While recent years still bear traces of the American dad of the Norman Rockwell era (the ad showing a gray-haired patriarch dispensing advice to his son over a tumbler of Dewar’s, for example), increasingly common are spots like the contentious trio from Fidelity Investments via Arnold, Boston, which show fathers acting, more or less, like frat boy assholes. In “Kid’s Toy,” a bored father in a doctor’s waiting room becomes entranced by a simple children’s toy while real children look on in pity. “Ping-Pong” shows a father utterly demolishing his doe-eyed daughter in a game of table tennis in the garage, then gloating over his victory by pointing his finger at her and laughing. It’s common marketing wisdom that ads which play to emotions can really get the job done, even when those emotions are shock and anger. But at a time when many bemoan the erosion of the family unit and social scientists can clinically prove the critical role of fathers in childhood development, one can’t help but wonder: Is it such a good idea to make dad look like a total jerk? Shouldn’t marketers know better? Setting up dad as the punch line is easy in a world where taboos have vanished and entertainment sells everything. But in that same world–one in which traditional gender roles are mutating and men are doing more domestic duties than ever–some say that advertisers who flip the bird at dad are, in effect, doing it at tomorrow’s core customer. Scott Mires, founder and creative director of San Diego ad shop Mires+Ball, points out that inside the average American home “there’s been a shift in shared responsibility” that’s increasingly putting fathers in the role of “understanding what brands their kids like.” In other words, more and more, it’s dad who’s pushing the shopping cart these days, not mom. So you wanna insult him? Brands that “leave out men as a whole category,” Mires said, “are really missing a big opportunity.” Mister Mom The psychology behind poke-fun-at-dad marketing is easy enough to understand. After all, virtually since the invention of the United States, dad’s been the breadwinner and mom’s been the shopper. For the baby- boomer generation (whose fathers imbued in them a fiscal conservatism forged in the Great Depression). it only made sense to treat dad like the tightwad and mom as the spender, and focus most all marketing efforts on the lady of the house. Back in the old days, ads that focused on dad focused on the handful of things a guy would buy for himself: a shaving razor, perhaps, and of course the family car. In those spots, dad was king, and he was a damn smart guy, too. He was, for instance, the man in a 1970 print ad for Mercedes who said people thought he was crazy for paying more than $8,000 for a car. The photograph in the ad pictures a woman driving the car in a bad storm with two children tucked into the back seat. “But when my wife and kids are out there on a day like today,” echoes the sage patriarch, “that car is the best investment I ever made.” That ad almost still coaxes an emotional sigh. But in truth, the domestic model it represents is roughly as accurate as a Leave it to Beaver episode. While statistically, mothers still assume the heavier childcare burden, fathers have slipped out of their tasseled loafers to be more mom-like than ever before. According to a University of Michigan study, while fathers in the 1970s spent only a third as much time as their wives in child-rearing duties, that time had risen to 43% by the time of the college’s 1999 report. In 2007, when Waterbury, Conn.-based Harrison Group asked men about the time they spent sharing household work with their wives, 56% of them said they split it right down the middle. Perhaps most telling of all: When Monster.com recently asked dads if they’d be a stay-at-home parent if money were no object, 70% of them said they would. Yet dumping on dads persists. A Pizza Hut spot from BBDO, New York, portrays a proud male who’s just “prepared” dinner for his family–by ordering in from the Hut (“Who says I can’t cook?” proclaims goofy dad). T-Mobile’s ad “26” stars a father whose life skills do not include the ability to multiply 5 times 5. And a spot for the iRobot Roomba vacuum features a wife complaining that her house is a mess because “my husband is a jackass.” (Full disclosure: The wife only nods toward the donkey’s ass when referring to her husband.) So, what gives? What were the account creatives thinking when they decided to poke a finger in dad’s eye? Well, don’t expect them to tell you. Arnold declined to comment about the Fidelity campaign. BBDO and Pizza Hut also declined to comment for this story. Some argue that marketers, ever desperate for a laugh, are simply taking the path of least resistance. “Lazy ad agencies love gags,” said Mark Tungate, author of the upcoming book Branded Male: Marketing to Men. “Slapstick is the easier form of humor, and men are the safest victims. It’s acceptable to slam Justin Timberlake in the balls, but adland would never dream of beating on a woman.” (Tungate, who’s based in Paris, added that dumbo-dad marketing tactics are hardly the sole possession of American advertisers. “I can assure you that men are the butt of most of the jokes on this side of the pond, too,” he said.) Others claim that a kind of reverse psychology is in play. “Part of branding is storytelling, and a good story has someone playing the fool to make [someone else] look good by comparison,” said Jim Twitchell, a marketing professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and author of Where Men Hide, an analysis of male camaraderie. “So whoever makes the women or the kid look smart is the doofus.” Making Dad Mad Others are clearly of the opinion that the doofus title belongs with the brand, not the man. One of them is Rose Cameron, svp and planning director at Leo Burnett, Chicago, who maintains that “when advertisers push portrayals of men as buffoons, they really anger men–who already are not on strong footing.” Another of them is Glenn Sacks. The newspaper columnist, talk show host blogger and commentator led a 2004 grassroots campaign to get Verizon to yank its “Homework” spot off the air. He succeeded, too. In fact, Sacks’ effort got ink from 300 publications nationwide. For its part, Verizon claimed that “Homework” had simply finished its scheduled run. Sacks’ response: Yeah, sure. “We clearly had an impact,” he said. “Because a Verizon pr person asked me to take down the page [on my blog] about that campaign. I told her, ‘We’re keeping it up there.’ “Last year, Sacks joined with FathersAndHusbands.org in a grassroots effort to persuade carmaker Volvo against keeping its advertising account with Arnold during a review because of the agency’s portrayal of men in the Fidelity ads. More than 3,000 people supported that campaign by contacting Volvo. (Incidentally, RSCG’s Volvo ad “Rosi,” a European campaign, is one that Sacks lauds for being “touching” for its portrayal of a sensitive father.) In response, the carmaker sent a letter to Sacks promising to run family-friendly commercials. Volvo ultimately kept Arnold. “It’s not my summer job in life to find ads and pretend to be offended by them,” said Sacks. “Some ads are funny, and I don’t rip apart every ad that shows a guy in a less-than-flattering way. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with poking fun at men. But it’s getting real old when you see so much of that over and over.” It’s getting real old for the men, too. In 2005, Leo Burnett released its “Man Study,” which had interviewed more than 2,000 men from 13 countries about their self-perception and their societal roles. When it came to images of the male in advertising, 79% of respondents said those media portrayals were out of touch with reality. “Unfortunately I think a lot of ads are directed at ourselves, the marketing community, rather than the consumer,” said Burnett’s Cameron. “Also, one of the great markers [society] looks to about the intelligence of a woman is her choice of husband. So if advertisers position men as idiots in the husband scenario, then you’re commenting on her smarts. Women have told us, ‘If you want to get on my good side, you do not show my husband as the idiot.'” Read the full article here.

Los Angeles, CA–“There are cretins, there are cowards, there are rats that walk like men. And then there is Larry Patterson Jr…an officer tried to pull Patterson over last week…Patterson sped away…[and] crashed into another car. He did not hang around to exchange insurance information. Instead, he bailed.

“But he left something behind.

“Namely, his passenger. More to the point, his daughter. She was found wedged between the rear windshield and the deck behind the back seats. She is 5 months old…despite not being secured in a car seat, [she] came through the accident without injury.

“Her name is Larissa, perhaps in honor of her 19-year-old father. Speaking of that paragon of moral virtue, he was found four blocks away at a McDonald’s, windshield glass still in his hair…It is incomprehensible that a man, even a 19-year-old man, could be so disconnected from his own humanity, so disconnected from the humanity of his infant daughter, that he would do what Patterson allegedly did.

“Yet, looked at another way, what happened on that Orlando street is unique only in degree.

“We’ve spent years bemoaning the cancer of father absence that corrodes our communities from within, years decrying the selfishness and the lack of social sanction that allow so many men to abandon their children, to harden themselves against their cries of need.

“So what Patterson (allegedly) did is only the thing writ large, only the thing exaggerated, only the thing made visceral and manifest in the hard reality of two cars tangled and mangled in the middle of the street and a baby, manhandled by the laws of physics, crying for the man whose job, whose prime directive in life, should have been to protect her. The man who ran instead.

“If Patterson did what they say, he is contemptible. But also contemptible is the man who abandons his child in less spectacular ways, who leaves his child not in imminent danger, but in ongoing danger, who doesn’t flee an accident scene, but flees, nonetheless.”–syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.

My new column “Leonard Pitts” Column Unfair to Black Fathers, Ignores Reasons for Father Absence” (The Southern Illinoisan & others, 3-6-08) criticizes Pitts’ (pictured) recent syndicated column Children bear the burden when fathers walk out, which I quoted above.

We argue that while some black fathers walk away, others have been driven out of their children’s lives, and the family law system does little to protect their loving bonds with their children.

To write a Letter to the Editor about the piece and the issue, click here. To write to Leonard Pitts, click on lpitts@MiamiHerald.com.

The column, co-authored with family law attorney Jeffery M. Leving, is below.

Leonard Pitts” Column Unfair to Black Fathers, Ignores Reasons for Father Absence
By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks

Leonard Pitts Jr.”s recent column “Man crashes car leaves 5-month-old in backseat’ excoriates “selfish’ African American fathers who “abandon their children [and] harden themselves against their cries of need.’ Pitts cites Larry Patterson, Jr., a 19-year-old black father who, after police tried to pull him over, allegedly sped away, smashed his car, and escaped, leaving his infant daughter in the backseat. Patterson is “unique only in degree,’ Pitts writes–for black men today, it”s “Every man for himself.’

Pitts” generalization is unfair. He is correct that some African-American fathers have behaved irresponsibly. However, he fails to see that many black fathers have been driven away by shortsighted, angry mothers and a family law system which does little to protect fathers’ loving bonds with their children.

When citing the reasons for father absence, Pitts mentions “divorce’ only in passing. Yet divorce and the breakups of unmarried couples are major causes of African-American fatherlessness.

Despite the stereotype of the feckless and irresponsible male, research shows that the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, not by men. Even for unmarried couples, it”s doubtful that many dads wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “My child loves me and needs me, my girlfriend loves me and needs me–I”m outta here.’ Yes, some mothers have good reasons for these breakups. Yet, as Jonetta Rose Barras, the African-American author of Whatever Happened to Daddy’s Little Girl, explains, many black fathers are simply being “kicked to the curb.’

When a divorced or separated mother does not want her children”s father around anymore, she can usually push him out, particularly if the father does not earn enough money to pay for legal representation. Courts tilt heavily towards mothers in awarding custody, and enforce fathers” visitation rights indifferently. In most states, mothers are free to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers, often permanently destroying the fathers” bonds with their children.

Los Angeles, CA–In a recent Los Angeles Times story, Governor Schwarzenegger, my wife’s favorite politician, spoke about his kids’ need to have their father as a regular part of their lives. He said:

“The question is how can I be with my family, because that is extremely important, to be with my kids. They are all growing up. They are in their teens. They need their father around.

“I felt it took a toll on my family not being at home every day. So what I am trying to do is find that balance between the family and running the state.”

Schwarzenegger, pictured with wife Maria Shriver and one of his two sons, has four children, ranging in age from 12 to 19.

The story is Governor’s high-flying commute draws flak. Thanks to Peter, a reader, for sending it.

Boston, MA–Shared parenting activist Laura Chidester sent me this sad Boston Globe story about a grieving couple. Both mother and father suffered an equal loss, but the mother was awarded much more in damages. Laura writes:

“The article doesn’t explain why the mother was awarded so much more, but I bet we can guess.”

Perhaps there’s a logical reason why the mother was awarded over three times what the father was awarded–the article explains it a little, but not much. But one can’t help but suspect that the jury may believe that a mother feels the loss of her children more than a father does.

Jury faults mortuary for losing remains
Awards couple $325,000 in suit over son’s missing body
Boston Globe, March 5, 2008

A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded a Boston couple a total of $325,000 yesterday, ruling that they suffered emotional distress when a city funeral home lost and possibly cremated the remains of their stillborn son.

“We will always wonder where our son is,” Robert Benedict said in an interview after the verdict. “It will never bring peace.”

The civil verdict by the jury of eight women and six men came after a day and a half of deliberations. Superior Court Judge Paul K. Troy, speaking from the bench after the verdict, called the case a “tragedy” and “heartbreaking.”

“There are no winners,” he said.

Robert and Therese Bellissimo Benedict said they suffered needlessly because of a mistake by the J.S. Waterman & Sons funeral home in the North End, which is owned by Service Corporation International, a national chain based in Houston.

In an interview yesterday, the Benedicts noted that Service Corporation International trains employees through what the company calls Dignity University, an online program.

“Whoever was on staff when my son was there missed that entire semester at Dignity University,” Therese Benedict said. “In some ways, it is a direct correlation to depersonalizing what was once a family-owned business.”

The jury found that the funeral home was negligent and caused Robert Benedict emotional distress and awarded him $75,000. The jury awarded Therese Benedict $250,000 after concluding she was subjected to both negligent actions and intentional infliction of emotional harm.

Lisa Marshall, spokeswoman for Service Corporation International, said in a telephone interview that the company regrets the trouble that befell the Benedicts.

“This is not typical of the way our funeral homes operate,” she said. “It was a mistake, and we are very sorry about that.”

Read the full article here.

Sacramento, CA–Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here.

One of the presenters at the conference was Claudia Ann Dias, MSC, JD, who provides education and training in the fields of substance abuse, family violence, cultural awareness, sexual harassment and communications skills to both public and private sectors. She has been featured on 20/20 and Oprah for her work with male and female family violence perpetrators.

Dias spoke about what she described as the triangle of some troubled relationships. There are three parts to the triangle — the victim, the rescuer, and the persecutor.

Dias (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft)explained that everything people do, they do for a benefit. When a person in a relationship is a “victim,” she says, the person gets benefits from it. Among the benefits for the victim include attention, sympathy, freedom from accountability, lowered expectations, being cared for, and, Dias emphasized, great, great stories.

For the rescuer, Dias listed benefits such as self-esteem, purpose, recognition, and distraction from one’s own problems. She says that the rescuer “collects chips”– for everything they do, they put a chip in their pocket, so one day they can say, “For all I’ve done for you, you can do this for me.”

When the rescuer no longer wants to be the rescuer, or slips up, he becomes the persecutor. The persecutor is the rescuer who has failed the victim. The failed rescuer-turned-persecutor is the worst person in the world, and is treated accordingly. The failed rescuer begs to come back, to be given his job back, and the victim generously allows it. As a therapist, she says, things begin to change as soon as you hold the victim accountable for his or her behavior.

I thought what she said had a lot of truth to it. One light moment in the conference occurred when Dias had written a bunch of stuff on her white board, and had no more room and no way to erase it. I took a couple napkins out of my briefcase and went up and erased the white board. As I was doing it, someone in the audience said, “He is the rescuer,” and everybody laughed.

As soon as I finished erasing the board, I announced, “Now I’m going to cash in my chips,” and I walked over to Claudia and gave her a big hug. Everyone laughed. I suppose what I should have done was bend her back over my knee and give her a big, dramatic, movie-style kiss. The picture at the top was taken just before I made my move…

California–Background: California Lawyer magazine covered the Fathers’ Rights Movement in the #2 story in its March issue–The Dad-Vocates by Bill Blum. The article quotes family law attorney David C. Stone, men’s advocate Warren Farrell, Craig Candelore of the Men’s Legal Center, myself, and others. In the article, Helen Grieco, executive director of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) says, “The fathers’ rights movement is both dishonest and dangerous.”
According to Blum: “She views the rise of fathers’ rights organizations in the 1980s-and the accompanying increase in custody disputes as bargaining tools-as a direct response to ‘the demand of the women’s movement for greater child support, which ended up costing fathers more money.’ Under California law (Cal. Fam. Code 4055), Grieco points out, child-support payments are determined by a formula tying support both to the income of the parents and, most important, to the percentage of time children spend in the physical custody of each parent. Generally, the more time a child spends with a mother having primary physical custody, the more support a father must pay. “‘There are definitely financial reasons why some men seek child custody,’ says USC Law School professor Scott Altman, who studied divorce-negotiation tactics by polling the members of the family law section of the California Bar. Altman found that over a one-year period more than 60 percent of divorce attorneys reported receiving threats of custody litigation from their opponents to extract more favorable child-support arrangements. Altman further found that attorneys who represented women exclusively or predominantly received such threats three times as often as their counterparts. (Lurking in the Shadow, 68 USC L. Rev. 493 (1995).)” This is a common and misleading feminist argument. I discussed it in my co-authored column Louisiana’s HB 315 Says One Parent is Better Than Two (Shreveport Times, 5/20/06): “In Louisiana, like most states, how much time each parent spends with his or her children helps determine how much child support is ordered. Rep. Shirley Bowler (R-River Ridge), who authored the bill, asserts that dads seek shared custody as a way to decrease their child support obligations. She promotes HB 315 as a way to ‘remove this angle’ in the current law, which she claims divorced dads are exploiting. “While it is true that there are fathers who put their pocketbooks above their children”s best interests, Bowler and the bill”s supporters ignore the obvious converse. If a dad may seek 50% physical time with his children simply to lower his child support obligation, doesn”t it also hold that a mother may seek 85% physical time in order to increase it? “Similarly, critics charge that the child support provisions of current law amount to paying men to spend time with their children. In reality, the provisions simply acknowledge that both moms and dads have child-related expenses.”

Washington DC–Background: Two Fathers 4 Justice activists breached security and climbed onto the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on August 17, 2007. Fatherhood activist Bob Norton was present and said:

“Four security guards tackled protester Bob Dickerson to the floor and sat on him. They forced his head into the stone floor. The security people overreacted for sure. I think they tackled him just because he was trying to leave.

“It is F4J”s mission to do peaceful protests but the timing and location probably are not the best for this type of thing in DC with the hair trigger our government shows in using the Patriot Act, etc.”

A video of the protest can be seen here. To learn more, click here.

Steve, one of the security guards who arrested Dickerson, recently sent me his perspective of what occurred. Steve writes:

“I am one of the security guards who helped arrest Mr. Dickerson – I had on a burgundy shirt and a baseball cap (see picture). The problem with many of these comments/opinions are that they are done in hindsight.

“I was there with my children (I was off-duty at the time), and there was no indication that these were peaceful protestors. In this day, I don’t think it would be over-reacting to think that these people dressing in costume and scaling a national monument could have much more dire plans.

“As far as Mr. Dickerson, I witnessed him resisting arrest from a female officer who was much smaller than he, and I rushed to assist (while my children were safely with my girlfriend). I assure you we used minimal force to arrest him. While he did not lash out violently, the video does not show that he vehemently resisted physically. Again, it’s not like these people announced a “peaceful protest.” I believe the response was appropriate.

“P.S. I am also a divorced father.”