Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
A scene from "The Most Manipulative Super Bowl Ad Ever"
I admit I get into this every year around this time: The Super Bowl ads appear, and you have all these images that tug at your heart strings, like the soldiers coming home, the Budweiser Clydesdale horses saving the day, or whatever.
I get sucked into all this, and I end up liking some of these ads. And sharing them. Which of course is what the sponsors of these ads want us to do.
I'll probably get so taken in by these ads I will end up sharing them with you in this here blog thingy. But oh, well.
Stephen Colbert has gotten us ready for this onslaught by airing an ad he and his team invented, called the "The Most Emotionally Manipulative Super Bowl Ad Ever." It's got everything: America, homecomings, puppies, tragedy, pride, warmth, people on the job, dedicated people. And of course the corporate product at the end.
To prepare yourself for the Super Bowl ad season, here's the clip from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert:
Cars on Highway 40 northeast of Montreal were caught for hours
behind a highway wreck. This being Canada, the obvious thing
that happened was a hockey game broke out on the
icy highway while people waited for the wreck to be cleared.
A couple days ago, Highway 40 in Quebec was terribly icy. Not surprisingly, a 40 to 50 car pileup occurred on the icy road about 25 miles northeast of Montreal.
Of course, I won't make light of that. Several people were hurt, thankfully none seriously. And hundreds of cars were trapped on the highway for hours, until the wrecks were cleaned up.
However, I do have to make light of one aspect of this crash.
They tell us to have an emergency kit in our car during the winter. You know, things like blankets, a shovel, snacks, a weather radio, that kind of thing. If this is any indication, a Canadian car winter emergency kit consists of hockey sticks and a couple of pucks.
Unlike a list of men the women in Chicago's "Cell Block Tango" knocked off, Rainbow gives us a who's who of Trump sycophants who are now in trouble, or soon to be in trouble. It's a long list and it's a wonder Rainbow managed to edit things down for his video.
Rainbow knows the Trump list is long, so he has a subtitle to his video "Part One, Probably."
Rainbow does get his digs in, like when he notes Roger Stone was "indicted on multiple counts, including lying, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lacking basic fashion sense."
You'll have to see and hear the rest. Some of the visuals in the video are priceless.
A couple members of a musical group called Milk For The Angry were on a front stoop, just jamming with their instruments.
A car on the street broke down, and somebody went to get jumper cables to get the vehicle running again. A woman named Cleopatra walked by. From what I can gather, she was bringing popcorn and ice cream to her brother. Those jumper cables were also on her mind. Then she took notice of the musicians on the stoop.
Cleopatra joined in, and the rest is glorious history. I just LOVE Cleopatra. Watch, and you will, too:
A scene from the Gillette ad that takes on "toxic masculinity"
I'm still not sure why so many (mostly conservative)
viewers hate it.
That Gillette adthat hooks itself up with the Me Too movement and criticizes "toxic masculinity" has been out for a couple weeks now and some men - and a few women - are still pissed off at it.
The way some guys see it, the ad was meant to make all men feel bad about themselves.
I've seen the ad a few times now, and I'm still at a loss as to how this ad is offensive to guys.
It seems to call out the worst among us, and offer up the best of us as an antidote. It encourages us to be the best we can. You'd think that wouldn't be too controversial, but whatever.
I'm a gay guy, so there's some people who would probably say I have no right, or at least no knowledge of what "masculine" is. But men of any orientation can be masculine.
The Gillette ad to me is a throwback. It seems to illustrate what I was taught masculine meant decades ago when I was a kid.
A "real" man, I was taught, stands up for himself and others who are unfairly targeted. Masculinity is all about being respectful to others without letting other people disrespect you. A masculine man is a class act, ready to help out others in need, but is never a chump.
Masculine men stand up for what they believe, in word and deed. They don't try to disempower others, thinking that somehow builds them up. They don't lie, cheat or try to game the system. Masculine men are not bullies. They love to win, but only if the fight is fair.
A masculine man can be physically powerful, but that muscle isn't entirely necessary. The masculine man expresses his power by intervening in a situation that is wrong. A masculine man is brave, willing to promote an unpopular stand, if he thinks it's right.
A straight masculine man of course wants to have relationships with women. But this masculine man backs off when she says no. It's the right thing to do, and it's a matter of pride to be a mensch.
This is all stuff I learned from my father when I was growing up. I married a man who has all these traits, which is why I know I married well.
All that seems to be the theme of the Gillette ad.
Then how is it making men "feel bad" about themselves, as the critics claim? I see no evidence that the ad is trying to insult all men.
"If Gillette made a commercial predicated on women being bad & this is how they can all do better....the same radical feminists loving this ad would go nuts," Piers Morgan tweeted.
Oh Piers, where does it say in the ad that all men are bad? Come on, I'm waiting.
Karol Markowicz in the New York Postcomplained the ad tells us men are "universal aggressors and rapists" and that we need to "stop insulting men."
No, we only insult the men who are jerks.
The theme I kept seeing in the Gillette criticism is was somehow calling out men for being men. Which is the real insult to men. Do most men really want to be the worst they could be, not the best? Some of these critics doth protest too much.
I get it that Gillette put the ad out in part to get people to talk about the brand and maybe be inspired to pick up some of their products. Even if some snowflake-y people boycott the firm. Gillette wants to sell stuff, everybody knows that.
Gillette isn't always practicing what they preach, either, as The Today show points out.There is sort of a "pink tax" on products like razors marketed toward women that cost more, even though these products are identical to what men pay for basically the same products.
The ad is probably a logical extension of the "Me Too" movement. I guess they were trying to say that men can be allies in that movement. That's not such a bad thing
For what it's worth, here's the Gillette ad so you can see it again:
Somebody posted a video that shows how restaurants use different shaped glasses to make us think we're getting a lot more to drink in large sizes than small.
At Applebee's the people in the video ordered a small beer and a large beer. They drank the small beer. Then they poured the contents of the large beer into the smaller glass. When the small glass was full, there was barely anything at all in the large glass.
I'm guessing a lot of other restaurants do this, too. Watch and see for yourself:
A percentage (not all) of Trump supporters seem to like him because his
presidency his hurting (nonwhite) people they don't like
and that makes these supports happy.
A quote from a New York Times article last week from a woman who has been affected by the government shutdown has hit a lot of nerves, including my own.
The Florida Panhandle is pretty conservative. Trump territory. The Times interviewed a woman named Crystal Minton, a secretary at a local federal prison.
She's not happy about the pain caused by the government shutdown, as she is going without a paycheck for the duration.
This is what she told the Times, regarding Trump: "I voted for him and he's the one who's doing this....I thought he was going to do good things. He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting."
Got that?
I can't paint all Trump voters with the same brush. Not all are racist. Not all are hurtful. But this quote sums up why I'm disgusted by a fair number of Trump supporters.
A lot of them think the whole point of his presidency is to hurt people. Trump's not good at many things, but he's good at hurting people, or at least trying to. Notice how Minton regards hurting people as "good things."
Of course, the people Minton thinks Trump ought to be hurting are not white people like her. Nope,
"Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain....This is what makes Trumpism work. This is the dark heart of our political movement. Even people who are tremendously vulnerable themselves, like Crystal Minton, support Trump because of his capacity to inflict pain on others they detest."
"(Trumps) only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those would steal their birthright. The president's ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
Trump is a grifter, and he'll never hesitate to hurt anyone if it's expedient to him. Still, I have a feeling that Minton, the woman who said Trump is hurting "the wrong people" will ultimately stick by the president.
For now at least, the white, straight, cruel folks feel emboldened. Rep.Steven King of Iowa touts white supremacyand pretty much gets away with it, even with a backlash against him.
YouTube is now full of videos showing people being unabashedly racist toward blacks who have the gall to walk into their own apartment building, have a barbecue, go swimming at the neighborhood pool, park their car, or show up for work.
True. there's a backlash against the racist idiots in these videos, but still, they persist.
It's unclear whether the hate wing of the Trump crowd will go away, or get worse, or just be the unfortunately background noise of American life and politics.
I do believe this old cliche is true: "Hate destroys the vessel that carries it."
Those who embrace the hateful aspects of Trump do so at their own peril. There will be karma. Maybe that karma has already started.
