Boys Will Be … Oafs

CBS's Meyer: Madison Ave. Is Trying To Turn Boys Into Buffoons

(CBS)  Whatever happened to the old school, Hai Karate-style of advertising that at least tried to flatter guys by making them look suave and debonair?

In the modern guy ad, the guy must be portrayed as misogynistic, addicted, stupid, slobbish and mean -- an oaf who should be repulsive to girls and all humans. You can find the exact same stereotype all over television comedy, movies and pop music, especially some strains of rap.

In fact, most recent serious discussion of boys and popular culture has been prompted by explicitly violent, woman-hating and racist rap. It got most heated several years ago when Eminem performed at the Grammys - it was easier for critics to talk about Eminem because he's white, which allowed them to avoid the inevitable racism thickets.

Around that time, Charles Murray, one of the country's most controversial but interesting intellectuals, published an editorial in The Wall Street Journal called "Prole Models." He provocatively argued that in societies adrift, like ours, "elites" lose confidence in their strong "codes" -- their values and 'internal yardsticks,' the code of gentleman, the code of a lady, for example. That creates a vacuum.

Some in the elite have filled the vacuum with a weak code that he calls "ecumenical niceness" -- sort of a namby-pamby political correctness. But outside of the elite there is a vacuum too and it has been filled by what Murray called the "thug code."

"Take what you want, respond violently to anyone who antagonizes you, gloat when you win, despise courtesy as weakness, treat women as receptacles, take pride in cheating, deceiving, or exploiting successfully. The world of hip-hop is where the code is openly embraced. But hip-hop is only an expression of the code, not its source. It amounts to the hitherto inarticulate values of underclass males from time immemorial, now made articulate with the collaboration of some of America's best creative and merchandising talent.

…And there can be no counterweight from an elite that has lost the confidence to say, "We will not stand for this." If you doubt the impotence of ecumenical niceness, consider the recent reaction to the white rapper Eminem. His misogyny and homophobia are a direct, in-your-face challenge to the most central elements of ecumenical niceness, thrown down within an industry that passionately condemns any whiff of discrimination against women or gays when it is done by a peer. If the dominant minority still possessed a cultural code with spine and elan, Eminem would have no more chance of recording his lyrics than a four-letter word had of getting into Sports Illustrated in 1960."

Thug code is imitated outside its core community, by elites, by marketers and by the entertainment industry. It is embraced by professional athletes and movie stars and characters in beer ads. It is imitated by seventh graders who wear super-baggy pants, greet each other with 'Sup, call each other Dawg and refers to girls as Ho's.

Thus, many schools, probably most, like my own children's school, will embrace ecumenical niceness and teach about social tolerance, gender stereotypes and exploitive marketing in their classrooms, and then tolerate thug behavior and dress in the halls and playgrounds and tolerate kids using words like "ho," "suck" and "bitch" at school.

To use the language of the helping professions, boys are especially at risk to the thug code. Through the peddling of video games, cartoons, sitcoms, beer, cars, hair gel and trash radio, there is great financial incentive to peddle the thug code.

As a society, we will likely get what we pay for. And maybe I ought to give up on the Bears.

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Dick Meyer, is the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com.

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