Essay: Men are unfairly portrayed in this culture. Examples: The Simpsons--Homer is lovable and funny, but a dope. Bart is funny, but rather more than less of a shallow prick. Barney--drunk. Apu--money grubbing. Chief Wiggin, a moron. Mayor Quimby, a lecherous con artist, Rev. Lovejoy, a religious bigot, Crusty, an evil clown, Mr. Burns, an evil rich businessman, the principal of the school, a pompous ignoramous, Groundskeeper Willie, a rage-filled Scotsman, Otto the bus driver, a drug-addled doofus. Only Marge and Lisa are portrayed as more or less sane people (Patty and Selma, also, though living in despair). Malcolm in the Middle: Hal and the boys have to be reined in by Lois who knows all and manages all. Family Guy: Peter Griffin is impulsive, more or less insensitive, self-indulgent. His wife, by contrast, is mostly everything he's not. Radio commercials feature guys who are really dopey who have to be informed by or straightened out or otherwise moderated by the wise, all knowing woman. Men are portrayed as being violent towards women in domestic arrangements when in reality women initiate violence toward men in the same ways and to the same degrees as men.
But does this mean that all negative portrayals of specific men are without foundation? Take Tiger Woods as an example. He has for years gotten the most wonderful press possible. He's been praised as one the best golfers ever. He's been seized by certain people as being a representative of their race, though he himself doesn't portray himself as anything but multiracial. He's been described as a wonder who rose to greatness from a small child under the tutelage of a loving father. He has carefully maintained and promoted his image and gotten endorsement contracts worth many hundreds of millions of dollars. So was the negative attention to his many, many, many adulterous affairs an example of unfair portrayal of a man? Nope. He was a sleazeball. He admitted to it all. He used his position to portray himself one way to enrich himself while living entirely a different way. In this way he was defrauding his sponsors and lying to his fans. Perhaps people expected this kind of behavior out of movie stars, but assumed things were a bit different with a sports figure since he was doing something that was a lot more objective in its accomplishments than acting (though after Magic Johnson and Wilt Chamberlain I don't know how people could make that assumption about golfers unless they thought that sports libido was directly proportional to the size of the ball). On the one hand, it's probably true that he's one of the best golfers ever. But this doesn't mean he's a good guy. On the other hand, that fact that he's a moral slimeball who had probably mortally wounded his family doesn't mean that he can't be a great golfer. What everything means, though, is that his career is going to be eroded because of his truly horrible non-golf choices.
What does all this mean? It means that even though popular media unfairly portrays the male gender, it doesn't follow that all negative portrayals of individual men are inaccurate. It also doesn't follow that women are more to be believed because they are women. Look at what the uncritical willingness to accept the lies of a woman did to the members of the Duke lacrosse team. Were they behaving in bad ways? Yes. In criminal ways? No. But the societal predisposition to believe the woman combined with the prosecutor Nifong's urgency to use this case as a springboard for an upcoming election led to him conspiring to hide exculpatory evidence from the defense attorneys. He himself was later charged for his crimes. Members of the Duke academic community, before any guilt had been demonstrated at all, had already moved to expel the accused students from Duke. This underscores the necessity of looking past societal myths about gender in order to find the truth in demonstrable fact even if it upsets those who seek to benefit themselves from the myths.
Really? Lisa is portrayed as a self righteous, self centered, pretentious little jerk who thinks she is much smarter then she is. Patty and Selma are stuck in low paying dead-end jobs, friendless and often are rescued by Homer from their latest round of stupidity. That is when they are not trying to take advantage of Homer and having the whole thing back fire.
Mrs. Lovejoy is a hypocritical gossip. Maud Flanders was the neighbor from hell.
Crusty is not an evil clown (That would be Sideshow Bob) and Apu is a loving father and husband who does his best to care for a (very) large family. Marge and Ned Flanders are more or less normal because you have to have someone to make a contrast.
Sorry but if you try to build an essay around "men are unfairly portrayed" using the Simpsons you are going to have to look at the whole picture.