BIAS by Bernard Goldberg

BIAS by Bernard Goldberg

Author:Bernard Goldberg [Goldberg, Bernard]
Format: epub
Tags: Journalism, Non-Fiction, Politics
Amazon: B0026IUP2C
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


10 - Targeting Men

Putz.

It's one of those funny-sounding, completely inelegant Yiddish words that is totally without charm but manages

to make its point.

Like schmuck.

For the uninitiated, putz, loosely translated, means jerk - as in "I went to this fabulously trendy East Side restaurant and ordered the pesto pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and the waiter brought me spaghetti and meatballs. What a putz!"

For some reason this word is used a lot in Manhattan but almost never in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As for the literal translation of putz - don't ask. (Hint: rhymes with Venus.)

Putz probably had its heyday during the 1998 New York Senate race, when Republican Al D'Amato called his Democratic opponent, Charles Schumer, a "putzhead," a witty variation on the original "putz" - perhaps not in the Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw class of sophisticated observations, but no one ever confused Al D'Amato with Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw.

Such uncivil behavior caught the ever watchful eye of the New York Times editorial page, which said such language epitomized D'Amato's nastiness and vitriol. The Times also noted that New Yorkers who in the past might have voted for D'Amato rejected him in 1998, at least in part because of the "wounding power of slurs."

The "wounding power of slurs" is something the New York Times and sensitive network news types are always on the lookout for. Except when the slur is aimed at the one group they consider fair game.

Men.

This brings us to Harry Smith, the former coanchor of CBS This Morning, as affable a feminist as you'll ever meet - and even in a business populated by so many liberals, Harry is out there, way off in left field. It was the summer of 1995, August 14, to be exact. I had just come back from a vacation in Alaska with my wife, Nancy, and our daughter, Catherine. We were at a hotel in Seattle, and I turned on CBS This Morning to see what was going on.

There was Harry interviewing the actor Dennis Quaid about a movie he had just done, Something to Talk About. In the movie Quaid plays a sleazeball, a married man who can't keep his hands off half the women in town.

To Harry this is how men act in real life too. Which prompted him to say to Quaid, "I'm under the assumption that most men are putzes."

In Harry's mind this was a perfectly reasonable observation. Because to Harry Smith, most men are putzes. I know this because I called him a few days later and asked just what he had in mind.

"Men are the cheaters," Harry told me. "Men are the philanderers. We're the ones who don't take care of our families."

The word putz was creeping into my mind... but it wasn't most men''' I was thinking about.

"And white guys are running around the country complaining that they're victims," he added, just to make sure I was getting his point.

I understand all that hut what I can't figure out is how you can spell "Harry Smith" without using the letters pc.



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