Another quick thing to think about: Just read online that someone (else) is suing "Spike TV" (now that they've won that case) about Stripperella, claiming that Stan Lee stole her idea. This, plus the whole Spike Lee thing, just makes me think, "Would you people just shut the hell up and let these nice people entertain you?!" Is there some kind of curse, or really just unfortunate, funny coincidental marketing/timing? Sure, Lifetime and Oxygen expand to comine to over 30 channels, but "the first network for men" can't seem to get it's feet off the ground! (yeah, I know, TNN's been around a while, through a couple previous personality changes). I guess ESPN doesn't count, since it's just sports and women can enjoy that too (despite what the ratings say).

I'm just channeling a little bit of Tim Allen - he claims that he's not an anit-feminist, he's a masculinist. I say, yeah, nothing against women...it's just men have been catching a lot of flak for a while in the wake of women's rights. Like I just mentioned, there's now a ton of women's programming, but we finally just got one network coming right out and saying "we're devoting our programming toward men!". (Again, I don't care if that's what networks have been doing already, this is a little more on the marketing side). And now I'll take it a step further: to include race, not that I've got anything against "minorities", but with all the stuff going on the last 40 years or so, it's kinda tough to be a white male, generally speaking. We're becoming the minority.

I'm not trying to get into some kind of white supremacy rant or anything...I am certainly nothing like that. Just want to make that clear. I guess it's just that it seems to me that white men are kind of licking their wounds after all that's gone on in civil rights and all. It just feels...I dunno...like I can't be proud of who I am because of who I am; because others are taking that away from me because of what my ancestors did. I'm not claiming anything personal here, I'm speaking from an "everyman" standpoint. And I most certainly could be wrong about it all...I'm just spouting stuff off the top of my head without going through my "stupid filter".

Like how some schools recently (I think the University of Michigan in particular) have tried to drop using race as a basis of admissions. My first thought about this was "Bravo!" But this apparently upset a lot of affirmative-action types. I'm not saying I'm against affirmative action. I would think a university's priority in admissions would be to accept those students who would contribute the most academically and make the university a better institution. I would hope they could choose those students regardless of what their skin color happens to be. (And on a side note, I'm hearing there's a general shift to multi-racial families, so maybe this won't be a problem in a few generations). Though I would find it unfair that a white person would lose a job to a lesser-qualified black person simply because they're black, according to affirmative action requirements. Again, please don't blast me about being racist or something horrible like that..I haven't really given it enough thought to have a cohesive stance on the issue. My point is I would actually support complete integration, in much how it should be - we shouldn't need stuff like affirmative action. I guess that's the Trekkie in me shining through.

Wow, I wasn't expecting quite a long rant. I just wanted to mention the Stripperella thing. Speaking of which, I still have yet to watch their linchpin programming...guess I'll try and do that tonight. Peace :)
posted by Tim at 2:12 AM