Voyeurism & Great Outdoors 25 Apr 2006 01:21 pm
Fishing is biting off more than it can chew.
I’m soaking up some of my free cable TV while I’m still housebound. Mostly by watching movies. The person I’m living with is a huge fan of TV and we have all the movie channels. I’ve long since written DVD rentals out of my budget so I’m normally catching up on Hollywood.
But at the moment I’m watching a fishing show. It seemed like a good idea as I have a fishing pole now and might be able to glean some info off it. But, instead I’ve been dismayed with what I have gotten myself into.
It’s a Babe Winkleman show and he talks about fishing, then when it comes time to cook the fish they turn to his wife. Oh just smack them all down! Did some exec at the station say, “you know, babe, that name is a little too effeminate. We have to reassure the viewer that you’re a manly-man so all the cooking needs to be done by your wife. The gender stereotypes must be preserved.”
Maybe I’ll need to paint my fishing pole pink so that I can fit in and get a guy to do all the yucky stuff like skewer the worm, remove the hook from the fish and clean it. Then I’ll cook it up, prepare him a plate and fetch him beer all night. Maybe I can even get pregnant and eschew shoes too.
on 25 Apr 2006 at 1:50 pm 1.Lumpy said …
You know, just MAYBE its not an evil plan for men to keep women down. Perhaps he thought that it would be wonderful to include his wife into the show somehow. Maybe she isnt that great at fishing so they have her do something she is good at.
Silly Liberals, always trying to find something to cry about. Why dont you cry less and job search more?
on 25 Apr 2006 at 6:03 pm 2.April said …
Oh Lumpy, you silly narrow minded conservative! You’re just so full of simple answers! Too bad they’re based on simple observations as processed by simple thoughts.
I’m not suggesting that Babe Winkleman is part of a conspiracy to hold women down, a minion in the battle to maintain the gender status quo as part of some great multi-nation army to keep women preparing fish for the dining room table so that manly men can come eat it. It’s funny to me that you’re read such into it and have commented the way you did, it’s far more humorous than the actual show was! Thanks!
The television show in questions plays so simplistically into that stereotype of the man as the big game hunter going out, being virile and getting meat and the woman cooks it and feeds him. Perhaps that song and dance will play out for other people but it doesn’t work for me. I don’t buy into gender roles and limit myself with them. I’d much rather do as I please and let the narrow minded people like yourself fret over the results. I’d rather live a fulfilling life than worry about the lunies who think I’m responsible for terrorist acts and the degradation of America.
If it’s like you say and she can’t fish then why not include her in the rest of the show so that she could ask the stupid questions that I, as a non-fisher, would like to ask? Why can’t she be there as the person to instruct rather than just have Babe blather on and on without a context. Look around at other shows, the novice is often paired with the master for just the very reason I’m stating. And since they’re husband and wife they should have a great rapport together and work well on screen and will help promote the show and fishing in general as family friendly. Then if Babe doesn’t know how to cook he could be put into the kitchen with her so they could reverse roles.
Why dont you cry less and job search more?
Ahh, silly conservative! Why don’t you read more and come to an understanding about the situation before coming up with a half-assed answer and pontificating about it? I wrote a special post just for you!
Crying? Do you think I’m so feeble that Babe Winkleman is going to make me cry? Apparently you have the wrong impression of me, perhaps again from not reading my words with open eyes–when reading them at all. What could he possible have said that would have caused tears? But I do thank you for you concern regarding my happiness. Just please don’t concern yourself further over this! I didn’t cry a single tear over the fishing program, I just cringed a bit at the comically stereotyped behavior.
This weekend I made money doing car repair. Nothing official and out of an established business. No, I was working off my father’s driveway. Like all of my income of late it comes in bursts, but I’m still doing a job. Just not a 9-5 steady income sort of job. This was for a friend of mine who needed some relatively simple repairs and was going to get ripped off by the garage she originally went to and thus called me. For this I was paid well for my time and she still saved a bundle of money.
While I spent the afternoon ripping her car apart and putting it back together the neighborhood kids were enjoying the spectacle. The thing I found curious was that it was all girls. The boys didn’t care. But the girls must have found the two chicks fixing the car a curious sight. They’d repeated ride by on their bikes and sometimes stand silently just outside of conversational range and stare.
Perhaps they had never seen such a thing. Perhaps in their families and the media that they see the women don’t do mechanical “manly” things and spend their time fixing fish the husband has caught.
Perhaps what I’d like to see is a little bit more of myself on television. Or perhaps you’d rather I just shut up and be a good, docile and subservient women.
on 25 Apr 2006 at 11:24 pm 3.Lumpy said …
You have more time on your hands than I had originally imagined. Unfortunately I dont so I cant even read that lengthy novel you wrote. Im not a Conservative, I just hate the American hating Liberals.
Have a nice day
on 26 Apr 2006 at 12:17 am 4.April said …
Lumpy,
A story for you: In my college years I had a composition class as part of the three section English program there. The class as a whole was being belittled for their poor quality weekly papers being turned in. Many of the students I knew to be working long and hard hours at these things and a few were truly blowing the projects off. The instructor even said as much and I felt I was in the later category.
But then she shocked me. She said there was only one person who was truly mastering the weekly projects plus a couple who were doing alright. She held my paper up and said, “April here obviously does many drafts and revisions and really works all week on her work. Her excellence is the reward for hard labors”
That assessment couldn’t be further from the truth. Generally I started the project about 8pm the night before and knocked them off before bed, putting a total of a couple hours into the projects and quite literally was turning in my first drafts.
The same holds true here.
This website is founded on the fact that I can write quickly and in the first draft turn out something of substance. I’m sorry to hear I’m going over your abilities or patience level. Perhaps you’re in the group in that class who couldn’t understand Swift’s Modest Proposal and complained that it was just too tough and no one could understand it. Several of us and the instructor then went on to have a conversation on it–one that bored me deeply.
Perhaps for you writing such “novels” would take extraordinary effort, but for some it just drops off the fingers.
And before you go off hating those nasty liberals who speak critically of the US, do please remember that if it wasn’t for our revolutionary forefathers who spoke critically of their government at the time we’d still be an English colony. Progress happens through inquiry, critique and change. I’ll wager that most of the people you’re hating on actually love their country and only want it to be the best it can be. Opinions on what that is may differ, but to call someone unpatriotic because they don’t adhere to your particular views is like declaring your own private totalitarian regime. It’s a democracy, in theory anyways, where everyone gets to voice their own opinion.
But then, you’ve probably not read through this “novel,” right?
on 26 Apr 2006 at 12:46 pm 5.Keith Didion said …
Skooled!
on 26 Apr 2006 at 10:28 pm 6.Lumpy said …
You just said it. “And before you go off hating those nasty liberals who speak critically of the US, do please remember that if it wasn’t for our revolutionary forefathers who spoke critically of their government at the time we’d still be an English colony. Progress happens through inquiry, critique and change.”
Thats all the left has going for them. As long as they are different and protest everything mainstream they have a cause. If suddenly the whole world turned leftist, the lefties would then protest it and demand that we go in another direction.
Silly college kids.
You can buy a degree but you have to be born with common sense.
on 27 Apr 2006 at 11:07 am 7.Rollo said …
And to be just as ASSumptuous as you, Lumpy, I’m predicting that you’re one of those ubiquitously average, unremarkably intelligent people who didn’t go to college (but probably could have) and who will spend the rest of his unexamined life RESENTING THE LIVING SHIT out of every person he meets who did. I know your type. Well actually we all do because your type is so fucking easy. What’s not to know about you? You are everywhere, like Xerox copies, and just as unimportant. The baseball stadiums are full of “you”s. A faceless sea of rugged-voiced know-it-alls swaggering around, high-fiving each other, and trying to look taller; (and later feeling anxious and small when you have to use the urinals together) Leering at women (who would cringe at the idea of touching you) and laughing too loudly–whether or not you get the joke; and unless it’s about big tits or copulation, the chances are you don’t. The best punchline of all, though, is that you don’t know any of this. You have no idea that you’re not half as smart or as practical as you think you are. But then, how could you be expected to know anything in addition to what you already know when you take such aggressive pains to separate your Everyman jingoist kingdom from any idea that you fear might possibly threaten it. You’re a little dick at the urinal of life, and Your Country Tis Of Thee doesn’t give a pebble shit about you either.
But it’s fun watching you seethe with pretend apathy over these “liberals”, so keep it up!
High five?