Pat Taub
GUEST POST by LISA SAVAGE
The astonishingly tone deaf PAC ad on behalf of Harris-Walz, “Man Enough”, really has to be seen to be believed. About 99% of viewers are convinced the ad is satire, with many commenting: “Saturday Night Live is funny again!” But alas, it’s not SNL.
Stereotypes played by actors that likely never sat on a pickup truck tailgate in their lives deliver lines like, “I’m man enough to bench press 500 lbs and then braid the sh** out of my daughter’s hair.” As a male family member who works in advertising commented, “Bad idea, terrible execution.”
Actor in the Harris-Walz ad, “Are You Man Enough?”
It is believed that the ad is aimed at conservative male voters who may be averse to voting for a female president. This tracks with President Obama giving a speech the week prior to the ad’s release admonishing Black “brothers” for not supporting the idea of a woman in the White House.
Obama addressing a campaign rally in Pittsburgh encouraging Black men to vote for Harris
But it’s really hard to believe that either effort – Obama’s speech or the 90 second ad – effectively addressed their intended audiences.
Although this blog focuses on women’s older wisdom, I’d like to share a man’s older wisdom in response to my blog post about the ad, “October Surprise?” My husband Mark Roman, age 77, has lived a rural, working class life making a living with his hands and he grew up during a time when men were men and women were in the kitchen.
His thoughts:
I’m man enough to love cats! I’m man enough to bake fantastic sourdough bread!
Mark’s homemade sourdough bread
I’m man enough to put on a tutu in a foreign country and dance in front of total strangers. I’m man enough to tell the triage nurse in the ER that my cat bit me when I foolishly cut off half my pinkie on a woodworking machine!
I’m man enough to lock myself down and block the entry of a weapons manufacturing plant making weapons to commit genocide. I’m man enough to kiss anyone who stands there with me.
I’m man enough to say f*** you and the horse you rode in on to anyone who has an excuse for supporting a candidate willing to kill innocent men, women and children, in a genocide. I’m f***ing tired of people who don’t want to upset their standing in the community! I’m so tired of war.
Playing identity politics has become the brand of today’s Democratic Party. They presume liberals will support Vice President Kamala Harris because she is a woman of color, and also because she isn’t the much-loathed President Donald Trump.
Young voters are not buying this. Muslim voters are not buying this. They see the U.S.-Israel lockstep marching us toward World War III as a bi-partisan affair, and they see the Biden administration’s duplicity in decrying Israel’s genocide while still funding and arming it. An administration that VP Harris is part of and consistently signaling that, should she win in November, nothing much will change.
A large number of Muslim voters are against Harris because of her support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
My husband didn’t say so, but I happen to know that he’s also man enough to vote for Dr. Jill Stein for president. He knows Jill and has voted for her before; in Maine, where we live, he can rank Stein-Ware 1ston his ballot with no danger of the spoiler effect due to ranked choice voting. But even before we had RCV he voted for Jill and, previously, for other Green Party candidates. Because he’s man enough to reject the corporate party duopoly and to vote his conscience.
Green Party candidates: Butch Ware (VP) & Jill Stein, Presidential candidate
Based on what I’m seeing in polling and on social media, a large number of people who do and don’t identify as men will be joining him on November 5.
Lisa Savage is a retired teacher, who continues post-retirement, to engage in organizing around pushing back on genocide and militarism. She blogs at: went2thebridge.substack.com
