Posted on 01/16/2014 10:08:08 AM PST by Aspenhuskerette
As a binge TV watcher, I’ve relished devouring serial dramas in advertising-free gulps. But “Breaking Bad” — the story about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher turned clandestine meth-cooking badass — didn’t appeal. Then Anthony Hopkins declared it an “epic work” with “the best actors I’ve ever seen.”
Midway through Season 2, I understand why Walter White is heroic. As men increasingly check out of work, marriage and fatherhood, it’s hard not to root for a man fiercely determined to secure his family’s future before dying — despite his morally abhorrent methods.
That there are dramatically fewer men willing and able to safeguard family prosperity is perhaps America’s greatest — and unrecognized — problem.
Consider Sunday’s “Shattering the Glass Ceiling” discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” Lamenting unrealized opportunities and unsolved problems when “women aren’t fully utilized,” Carly Fiorina and co-panelists were oblivious that two times more men than women ages 25 to 34 languish in their parents’ basements far below the glass ceiling, according to U.S. census data, and that women now outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic and vocational well-being.
(Excerpt) Read more at aspentimes.com ...
Well, no. I would not be rooting for a meth dealer. That is why I don’t watch shows like that
“That there are dramatically fewer men willing and able to safeguard family prosperity is perhaps America’s greatest — and unrecognized — problem.”
Well, why should men care about that when we keep getting told we are superfluous? Why should we bother, when women have become so good at safeguarding their own prosperity, with the help of the court system?
Well, why should men care about that when we keep getting told we are superfluous? Why should we bother, when women have become so good at safeguarding their own prosperity, with the help of the court system?
Darn good answer!
The article mentions the school systems too. Mostly in the context of failing the males in their methodology. I would say that the current school systems and their methodologies fail ALL of their students, male or female. And the example are so numerous that it doesn’t even need to be pointed out. Anyone who has a child or grand-child knows this quite well.
>>>Well, why should men care about that when we keep getting told we are superfluous? Why should we bother, when women have become so good at safeguarding their own prosperity, with the help of the court system?<<<
Even if you do bother, who will you marry? Look at sitcoms how the husband/father is routinely the butt of all jokes and made to look like a doofus. The culture simply does not produce women who will respect and appreciate a man for doing what the author of this article claims to like about breaking bad: Which is manning up and taking care of his family.
Perhaps that is in part because so many women work today. Perhaps it’s partially due to feminism telling both sexes men and women are essentially the same. Whatever the cause, a man who provides for his family isn’t give the respect/status that his father and grandfather received. And that is not my opinion, that is Charles Murray’s opinion from his book Coming Apart.
So today men get less respect for their role as breadwinner. Assuming he even earns more than his wife. Add on the real possibility that any day your wife can decided without your consent that she is divorcing you, for any reason whatsoever, then you find the risk side of marriage has increased dramatically. I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but less reward and more risk means fewer men will “man up” as the author laments.
I watch no shows that glorify criminals and they don’t get theirs in the end. Basically nothing after 1960’s.
cool
Just not my kind of show. I like to have at least one character I can identify with, not rooting for them all to die ghastly deaths.
Well, no. I would not be rooting for a meth dealer. That is why I don’t watch shows like that
***
Same here. Pretty sad that this writer feels compelled to.
I'm pretty much the same way, people need to make the decision that TV is wrong, and that they shouldn't use it.
Not really, the good guys and the bad guys are pretty consistent, and Hollywood didn't start pushing the "anti-hero" until they set out to distort and change our nation's "real life".
I’m not, in any way, defending television in general, because it is 95% crap, but in Breaking Bad, he got his in the end, if that means anything to you.
In a ‘play on words’, in actuality ‘they’ are saying White Male CEO’s are definitely STUPID.
‘They’ claim that women and/or minorities who are just as qualified, diligent, strong, loyal etc etc consistently make .25 to ?? per hour LESS than the equally qualified male counterpart.
Where they call (or infer) attention to our being ‘stupid’ is:
A CEO, owner should just have hired ALL women and minorities and just put the .25 per hour in HIS OWN pocket.
Then again, ‘THEY’ have taken our ‘old argument’ away by now granting MEN ‘maternity leave’, forced companies to have day care centers and where not provided subsidies are allowed.
When I was in the private enterprise workforce, we made less than Union Shops but more than say Government Employees. Where the GE made less money, they were offered vacation, retirement, Medical, sick leave, security etc.
When the more qualified of Private Enterprise people went elsewhere, perks were added.
One of the earliest was a Company Vehicle, with the excuse that as a Supervisor you were basically always on call. Then they started with vacation and/or sick time, Health Care.
Each time Private Enterprise gave the employee a new ‘perk’ the Govt jumped right in with taxes.
We have reached the point that working for the Govt not only gives one a lot of perks, the salary is no longer miniscule compared to Private for the ‘general work force’.
Of course when I got out of School/USN if one earned 10 grand a year they were definitely upscale AND rich???
Not having television, I haven’t seen the series, but I do know when we started seeing the anti-heroes, and why the left started it.
How would the pre-anti-hero, 1960 parents and good kids throughout our nation, see this hero?
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