The year 2008 will no doubt see hundreds of thousands of divorces, and has better than even odds of getting up into the millions on that statistic. The divorce rate rises and falls according to a variety of different causal factors, and it can be interesting to noodle some of those out, but I’d like to zero in on one in particular.

Let us first flash back across several years to a horrific and unusual crime. In late 1993, a toddler in Liverpool, UK was separated from his mother at a shopping mall. His mother momentarily distracted, he had been led out of the mall by a couple of truant boys. Shockingly, the moment was captured on CCTV, images from which became especially sad and poignant after what happened next.

…at some point Mrs Bulger realised that her son had gone missing. The two boys had taken him by the hand and led him out of the precinct. This moment was captured on a CCTV camera at 15:39.

The boys took Bulger on a 2½ mile (4 km) walk. At one point, they led him to a canal, where he sustained some injuries to his head and face, after apparently being dropped to the ground. Later on in their journey, a witness reported seeing Bulger being kicked in the ribs by one of the boys, to encourage him along.

During the entire walk, the boys were seen by 38 people, some of whom noticed an injury to the child’s head and later recalled that he seemed distressed. Others reported that Bulger appeared happy and was seen laughing, the boys seemingly alternating between hurting and distracting him. A few members of the public challenged the two older boys, but they claimed they were looking after their younger brother, or that he was lost and that they were taking him to the police station, and were allowed to continue on their way. They eventually led Bulger to a section of railway line near Walton, Merseyside.

From the facts disclosed at trial, at this location one of the boys threw blue modelling paint on Bulger’s face. They kicked him and hit him with bricks, stones and a 22 lb (10 kg) iron bar. They then placed batteries in his mouth. Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in hopes that a passing train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. Two days later, on the Sunday of the next week, Bulger’s body was discovered; a forensic pathologist later testified that he had died before his body was run over by an oncoming train which sliced through him.

So we have a small toddler at first experiencing that moment that occasionally visited itself on all of us who had mothers who shopped when we were tiny…I’ve lost my Mom. He wanders around and eventually bumps into some big kids, who take him by the hand, and he trusts them. Why shouldn’t he. After they make him walk much farther, I’m sure, than he’s ever walked before, he starts to cry after sensing something is wrong. At that point it gets very wrong indeed, because they start to punch him and kick him.

BUT — and this is the point I want to make — the physical abuse doesn’t begin in earnest, until the treatment with the blue modelling paint. And this is why the murder trial became sensational, complicated and chock full of debate, sensible & otherwise. The guilt of the murderers was easily established; their sense of right & wrong, was what evaded conclusive answer.

You see how this works? They abused him somewhat…then they disfigured him, made him funny-looking…after that, the abuse became lethal. Make things alien, make things appear to be unlike yourself, and then you have a much easier time destroying them. You can do it and still feel good about yourself.

In sum, the truants were given light treatment because the Brits are so incredibly “civilised” their government recognized in the boys the darker nature that lurks under the skin of everybody. My personal view on this? I remain steadfast in my conviction that we exist in proximity to each other according to an involuntary social contract, and Clause One of that social contract call for respect for human life — break that clause, and if someone had to pay for your breakage of it, then out you go. But the Brits aren’t like me. They ruled the original trial to be unfair, further ruled that the “boys” were “no longer a threat to society,” gave them new names, moved them to an undisclosed locality and let ’em start their lives all over again.

It’s a ruling that can be handed down only by magistrates enjoying personal guarantees of never, ever having to be impacted or affected by such insidious evil.

But the crime itself is something I have always found to be fascinating. And especially horrifying. The truants wanted to be unkind, and so they took the step of making their victim cosmetically different — at that point lethal unkindness was possible. And then, the gutless british officials scrambled around looking for reasons to be merciful. And so they recognized a human failing in the perpetrators and further recognized — accurately — that this failing applies to all of us. The judicial system of the UK, in effect, accomplished the exact opposite of what the young men on trial did. The murderous boys made a designated target unlike them so they could kill it; the british pansies made their designated target more like them, so they could grant leniency. In both cases, an emotional/intellectual ritual of sorts was carried out for the purpose of making a defined action more acceptable.

And then, in both cases, the defined action was pursued regardless. After a ritual that, in hindsight, was just plain silly.

Okay now that it is clear how we all work, let’s take a look at what we have been doing to men. Marc H. Rudov, one month ago, wrote up some observations on how advertising is done in early 21st-century America. We’ve noticed this and opined about it many times here, and Rudov is even less sympathetic to it than we are…since the advertising executives, in our view, are just doing their jobs. We are confident there must be some consumers of products and services out there, mostly female but perhaps some of the self-loathing effeminate male kind, who are more likely to make a purchase if they see men ridiculed. We figure this has got to be the case. But regardless of that, we remain receptive to Rudov’s point that whether they have commercial incentive to engage such a campaign or not, the ad execs are being craven, unscrupulous and ultimately foolish by engaging in it.

Today’s TV spots are moronizing and marginalizing men, with impunity. Why do they persist? Quite simply, most Americans — including a lot of self-hating men — approve. The genesis of every TV campaign begins by matching an advertiser’s sales objectives with an assumption about the zeitgeist. The advertiser bets that a TV campaign’s message will resonate with its targeted customers, who, hopefully, will respond by purchasing the promoted products or services. When earning my MBA at Boston University, I obviously missed the lecture on how to boost revenues of cameras and mutual funds by alienating men and fathers.

Sony & Fidelity Investments

That explains why I was incredulous when Sony aired its “Father Is a Horse’s Ass Commercial,” believing that insulting men would boost sales of the Cyber-shot® camera. The campaign didn’t last long, but I have yet to read about any Sony marketing execs or any BBDO advertising execs who lost their jobs over it. Imagine what those child actors thought about their own fathers as they were learning their lines, reciting them on camera, and watching the finished commercial. What were the impressions on their young minds and souls?

In another misandry-for-profit example, Fidelity Investments and Arnold Worldwide, both of Boston, teamed up to produce four spots designed to lure female investors by denigrating men. When you watch them, ask yourself this question: Why would women feel good about doing business with a company that trashes men?

1. Fidelity’s Moron: Misusing the Leafblower
2. Fidelity’s Moron: Parking the Car with Wife
3. Fidelity’s Moron: Playing with Child’s Toys
4. Fidelity’s Moron: Playing Pingpong with Daughter

How do you feel when you watch Fidelity’s spots? Are you enraged? Are you indifferent? Are you amused? Are you motivated to send a check to Fidelity? Your answer reveals a lot about you and your attitudes about men.

So we have two problems here. One, there are people, oh yes indeed there are, who do indeed feel “motivated to send a check to Fidelity” when they see men ridiculed in this way. And these people must be united by a market that is on the rise. Like, for example, female investors? Speculative gals just looking for a service that will…respect them for their female competence?

Perhaps looking for a safe place to put some excess cash? Cash they received out of…a divorce, perhaps?

And the other problem is the Bulger phenomenon. You paint someone’s face, make them alien and it is far easier to direct your destructive energies in their direction. Easier to justify.

I note, with no small amount of dread, that we have the makings of a vicious circle going on here. The first of the two problems I identified, provides the funding and the initiative for this “doofus dad” advertising campaign, out of divorces. Oh yes, you did know divorce was an industry, didn’t you? Well yes, it is. I can attest to this personally. And the second of those two problems, provides an incentive for more divorces, out of this childish spiteful advertising campaign. Why yes, mister nameless faceless television commercial…now that you mention it, my dopey husband does have something in common with that brainless boob you’ve put together in your 30-second spot. Maybe I could do better.

But I called this campaign “ultimately foolish.” Why is that? Because it all boils down to people…at least the ones with nuts & penises…even the ones that still have money…not knowing how long they’re going to have it. Wake up one morning, wife decides it’s time for a divorce, you’re pretty much gonna have one. And you’ll come out of it without any money. That’s the reality. Which means, of course, they’re less willing to spend it.

And so our gentlemen become far more frugal consumers than ever before. Why make commitments if you don’t know, day to day, whether or not you’ll possess the solvency required to meet them? As a result, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that advertising is aimed toward women. Women spend money. They’re the ones who can.

Essentially, our advertisers have made their own nightmare. Every spot they produce is going to waste money, unless it systematically ignores and actively alienates 49% of the population…which means it must waste money no matter what…and they’ve made it this way. So they must do more of it.

Update: This would inject further scope-creep into a post that it seems to me already has much…but it’s regretful that 2007 didn’t stick around long enough to see me finally bookmark this, and I wanted to finally get ‘er done somewhere. More here. I’ll comment later.