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Skepticism is a powerful tool, particularly where the state and the church have insinuated themselves into a market and locked out other actors. But sometimes the science is correct regardless of whether the state has monopolized the industry (or the research). Refusing to accept a factual truth, simply because it is being uttered by people we hate, is religious dogma. Telling people not to get vaccinated, we might as well be the Catholic Vatican telling them not to use condoms.

No, they didn't. But they DID want YOU to know in no uncertain terms, that THEY are a threat.

I've read his book, "Hedgemony or Survival: Mr. Jones Quest For Backyard Dominance" It was very interesting.

It's very easy to find confirmations of either complaint: "women are misrepresented", or "men are misrepresented". I'm not saying I have a definitive answer, but here's a quick list of shows I can think of, from the early 1980's through the early 2000's, we might look at (amongst the more "realistic" shows). For positive male (and father) roles: Dear John (middle-class man, college prof, divorced, childless, learns to make his way in the world again as a single man, after wife evacuates) Diff'rent Strokes (wealthy man, widowed, adopts two black orphans out of the goodness of his heart) Family Ties (middle-class man, psychologist, stay-at-home Dad; happily married well-meaning liberal mom; republican son) Full House (Two normal middle-class men, widowed and divorced, raising three girls) Growing Pains (The Kirk Cameron show) The Cosby Show (doctor, upper-middle-class, happily married) Webster (middle-class white family raising an adopted black orphan) Mad About You (upper middle-class liberal male, equally footed with upper-middle-class liberal female partner) Here are some that are a bit more ambiguous: Silver Spoons (divorced man, wealthy, raising his son on his own, son is more mature than father) Bosom Buddies (two guys cross-dressing in order to get into an all-woman apartment building) Cheers (the male characters ran the gamut from normal to insane) CHiPs (positively portrayed, but let's face it, they were California Cops) Family Matters (which was really more about lampooning CHICAGO, than it was lampooning men) Mr. Belvedere (where the main character was schizophrenically empathetic, and a jerk) My Two Dads (we're not sure which one of us is the father, but we'll make it work??) Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air (who needs a description of this show?) Friends (every character in this show had issues, but let's not forget that there was a Phoebe as well as a Joey). Punky Brewster (father walked out, mother abandoned, but foster dad is wealthy photographer) And of course, their are the more female-positive (male-negative) shows: Murphy Brown (single, upper-middle-class, professional woman) The Golden Girls (Two words: Estelle Getty) The Facts Of Life (A house full of girls raised by a governess) Cagney & Lacey (cop show) Everybody Loves Raymond (husband is like a grown-up boy. Wife is constantly rolling her eyes. However, mom is a battle-axe) Frasier (two angry effete assholes, living in downtown Seattle with their beer guzzling aged father) Home Improvement (Husband is a baffoon, wife rolls her eyes alot) Perfect Strangers (this show was just one step above Mork & Mindy, so it hardly counts) And, shows completely negative to both genders: Rosanne (Both husband and wife are baffoons, but: one daughter will only confide in the father) The Simpsons (A cartoon baffoon who likes junk food and choking his son alot) Married With Children (Unhappily married, both husband and wife are baffoons in their own right) Seinfeld (every character was an asshole, really) The Jeffersons (just about everyone on that show was obnoxiously painful to watch) It's entirely possible that after roughly 1998, everything went to hell in a handbasket. I haven't watched any prime-time general-audience commercial television since roughly then. I couldn't name you any show after about 2003 (except for 7th Heaven and Touched By A Prie-- er, I mean, Angel), without googling "TV Shows after 2000". So I suppose since thencaricatures of men could have become pervasive. I didn't bother going back before the 1980's, because I think the social climate did shift significantly after that. So, a couple of significant mentions were left out: Welcome Back Kotter [in rerun through the 80's] (middle class man, high school teacher, childless, happily married) The Brady Bunch [in rerun through the 80's] (upper-middle class divorcee re-married, architect, good father) But then, I'd also have to include All In The Family (angry drunk white man) and Good Times (angry drunk black man). But, there was also Family (wealthy independent work-from-home lawyer; stay-at-home mom) and Eight Is Enough (work-from-home newspaper columnist; stay-at-home mom) to balance those out. It might be different in Europe or England. I'm familiar with shows like "Keeping Up Appearances", and "Are You Being Served", because of PBS here in the states, and the male roles in those shows were pretty mysandric in nature. This could go on and on. But as far as I can tell, just from this cursory scan, it seems to me the impression that men are given overwhelmingly short-shrift (uniformly treated as unsympathetic throw-aways and miscreants) in television is pure confirmation-bias.

There were a number of things said by Dr. Farrell in that interview that called out loudly for citation. The Men's Rights Movement does have a point, in their complaints about the legal regime under which we live, I think. The work of feminism has tilted the scales against men in matters of divorce. But the social climate is much more muddled than MRM's are willing to admit. The "television dad" is a perfect example of this confusion. For every Al Bundy, there is at least one corresponding Cliff Huxtable. Fundamentally, though, this is all a surface debate. Someone really needs to be pointing out the presence of the presupposition of relationships as adversarial -- which stems from the existence of the gun in the room. There would be no need for "feminism" or "mens rights", if the state did not exist, and children were raised peacefully.

I would like to recommend the following Roger Waters work, as background for this reading. Just the right amount of anger and tension: [View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9jIm5iUZ8E] It's reminiscent of Jim Morrison.