The obvious fallacy in your argument is that you're citing current popular culture. I would never argue that current TV shows are responsible for current college enrollments. It takes time for pop culture to have an effect on behavior, particularly on a widespread basis.

And of course, the current dearth of male college enrollees is not solely the result of pop culture. As I and others remarked earlier, it's a multi-faceted thing. Feminist condemnation of men as violent surely had an effect on the overmedication of little boys that has been so often commented on. And, whether portrayed as specifically stupid or not, plenty of social messages are to the effect that pretty much everything deemed masculine is negative. According to them, if you're a male, there's something wrong with you. If you're not stupid, you're violent; if you're not violent, you're sex-obsessed; if not that, you're a childish neurotic; if you do achieve something noteworthy, you don't deserve your success, etc. (As to the last point, have you noticed the incredible welter of books, articles, etc. that take countless successful men in history and point out (a) what creeps they were and (b) that they never could have done it without their wife's help?)

My point is that all of the above and much more add up to an understandable low self-esteem among men. And why not? We consciously promote this stuff daily. The NYT article that's the subject of this Broadsheet piece is one example. When will we learn that it's just not smart for a society to demonize half its members? You'd think feminists of all people would know that, but apparently they don't.

No, I certainly would never argue that any type of conscious decision was ever made to depict men in an overall negative way. That type of conspiracy theory is almost never right. I think that feminism got to be popular in the 60s and 70s for some very good reasons. Women had been treated unequally and, more important, society, medical science, the economy and many other factors coincided to make unequal treatment unnecessary, unwise and contrary to law. In my view the speed with which feminism grew and was accepted by the public at large testify to the fact that its time had come. Unfortunately, feminism took the twin tacks of both raising women up and dragging men down. The latter was done in a variety of misandric and non-factual ways, but the popularity of feminism glossed over those matters. To accomplish anything of significance, our culture always needs an evildoer to attack, and, since women wore the white hats, men must wear the black. So, given the popularity of the feminist worldview, popular culture chipped in with various forms of "women - good; men - bad." It sold because of the popularity of the movement and the changing times, and selling is what pop culture is all about.

That's my take.

yeah, the Mary Winkler case is striking. In popular culture, the news, etc. men are routinely portrayed as appropriate victims of violence, and in this society victims of violence are overwhelmingly male. To what extent does popular culture promote this outcome? I can't guess, but I'm sure it plays a role. And of course feminists, who as we know are united in their opposition to domestic violence, wouldn't begin to notice, let alone oppose either phenomena. The Bobbit case years ago was another high-profile example, but they happen all the time.

I think the reason is that we, and I include feminists, still want to see women as the innocent, virtuous, non-sexual beings on a pedestal that feminism once claimed to disdain. (At the same time we want to see women as strong and capable of anything a man is capable of. This odd combination of the Victorian and the contemporary causes a good bit of confusion, I would say.) If we see women that way, it's hard to see them as the brutal killers some of them, like Winkler, clearly are.

that Bush was going to invade Iraq before the end of March at the latest because summer temperatures there would prevent doing so later. Robert Draper reprises that in his new book. The idea of a second resolution never had a chance.

If Winters used a racial epithet, you're right, he should get the boot, but no one says he did, so it's pointless to bring up. If Winters said something inflammatory, he should get some form of discipline like a warning, a period of probation or something of that nature. If he has similar incidents, the discipline should be increased. Enough incidents and then you fire him.

Umpires are just people; they are not verbal punching bags for whatever some hothead like Bradley wants to hit them with. Players and managers get in their faces all the time, spitting at them, screaming, etc. If one of them overreacts, the league needs to deal with it in a calm, professional manner which means the type of stair-step discipline described above.

what I said was that men are depicted negatively by popular culture, specifically as stupid. I confined my remark to that issue because it seemed germaine. The info that Parson Jim posted absolutely backs up what I said. Surely you can see that.