Don Imus could have saved himself a lot of trouble.
Instead of insulting the superstar black women's basketball players at Rutgers University, he should have told his listeners that white males are idiots who do nothing but drink beer, ogle women and scratch themselves. That way, rather than hearing himself rightly denounced for his rude, discriminatory remarks, he would have heard … nothing.
Seriously, is there any group you can attack with more impunity than males --particularly white males?
Here's how I put it during a recent appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor":
"Our boys are being abused by the media in a different way ... All you have to do is turn on the TV for 30 minutes and tell me how men and dads are portrayed -- as ignorant and stupid and lazy. The white, Anglo-Saxon male, the young teenage guy, is probably the most discriminated against kid on the face of the earth right now."
Although my comments on the subject were brief, this simple observation about how badly today's males are treated garnered a huge reaction. E-mail poured in. Viewer after viewer thanked me for defending just about the only group it's "PC" to diss. (Another frequent target: conservative Christians.)
A typical reaction from one father was this: "Thank you for your courage. It touches my heart to hear someone speak on our behalf."
I obviously touched a raw nerve. Viewers felt strongly enough to leave their TV sets, log on to their computers and search for my e-mail address to share their feelings.
A college student wrote: "You are absolutely right that men are being portrayed as idiots on TV. It's sad in my college (which is largely female-dominated) how poor of a rap men get. Granted, some men deserve what they get, and I have nothing against women, but for young men like me who are trying to uphold the values of chivalry, it can be very degrading."
Another viewer, a self-described "fed-up father of three boys," said he was "delighted to hear someone echo my longstanding observation that fathers these days are almost universally ridiculed by the media. It's been years since I've seen a humorous TV commercial where the joke is on the woman, for example."
How can this be? For one thing, there's a lot of money to be made from portraying males so contemptuously. One of the best videos I've ever seen, the Merchants of Cool (produced by PBS) carefully documents why the modern media robs young males of their dignity. As I note in my book, Home Invasion, the marketing industry, led by MTV, deliberately cultivates a grotesque male image known as a "mook" -- their definition of modern teen boys: