Background: TV often portrays men and fathers as idiots–to watch some videos of “dad as idiot” TV commercials, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
We’ve done two campaigns against these types of commercials, and have been more or less successful. To learn more, see Campaign Against Anti-Father Verizon Commercial and Campaign Against Anti-Male Advertising on our campaign page here.
If you have a daughter in the nine-year-old range, you’re probably familiar with the Disney show Hannah Montana. My daughter often forces me to watch it with her. Well, “forces” isn’t exactly accurate, since she snuggles up in my arms as we watch, which would probably make even going to the opera worth it.
Anyway, there’s a surprising thing about this show. In an era when we have a long parade of “doofus dads,” in Hannah Montana the family is being raised by a single father, and the father is actually a smart, loving, very-competent dad who is respected by his children. It’s refreshing to watch a show where a father’s intervention in a crisis or incident isn’t just a set-up for a joke about what an idiot he is.
In the show, the father, played by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, is a widower who is the sole caretaker of his children and who gave up his successful career as a country singer to raise his kids. Hannah is played by Billy’s real-life daughter and the show often has nice flashbacks of pictures of the two of them together as the little girl grew up.