Often the Super Bowl ads depicted these patheticoes in humiliating states of catastrophe. One promoting a disgusting snack called Doritos -- an inescapable insult to Latin cuisine -- ended with a loutish young man wearing a dog collar and writhing on the ground, supposedly another exemplary Doritos customer. Would you buy Doritos if you were depicted in such an undignified way? Are sensible adult viewers supposed to conclude that because an obvious idiot adores Doritos, we will, too? I am told there is also a wave of films whose protagonists are such coarse and stupid louts. My moviegoing confidants speak of "Step Brothers" and "Knocked Up." Perhaps I shall order a copy of each if I am laid up long enough with the flu.
Now, every generation has its allotment of poor souls. Yet I can think of no generation that has cast the poor soul as the norm. In fact, there was a day when young men were seen as young gentlemen. They aspired to being intelligent, hardworking, interested in a variety of exacting pastimes: sports, the outdoors, music, reading. In its early days, Playboy magazine was marketed to just this sort of discerning young man, one interested in jazz, sports cars, what then passed for high-tech consumer goods, what are now called careers and, of course, women undraped. Believe it or not, in the 1950s and for a while thereafter, Playboy was an intelligent -- if amoral -- magazine. Today, of course, it is coarse and stupid. So maybe Playboy, too, is evidence of young American men's failings.
The pathetic young men depicted in the Super Bowl ads at least do not appear dangerous. Crapulent after a few beers and a sack of Doritos, they probably pass out and catch colds sleeping on park benches in their shorts and sandals. At some point a few years from now, they really will enter middle age, at least physiologically. Their sad condition will not inspire emulation. An even younger generation of men will aspire to manliness, and American history abounds with examples of manliness for them to imitate. Young women, do not despair! Help is on the way.