Oh no! It's coming to emasculate our dudes! via daviddb @ flickr
Oh, Lord. Just read this passage about the Chrysler/Fiat merger:
The consequences of Fiat’s victory for the male American psyche could be devastating. Even though Chrysler will probably continue to make big cars for macho American dudes, the magical Euro-weeniness of the name “Fiat” alone will cause them to figuratively shrink. No nation can go directly from driving a Ram to driving a Little Mouse. Confused and belittled, American men will shrivel behind the wheels of their dinky cars.
Really? This is what someone is concerned with? The someone in question is Salon‘s Gary Kamiya, whose Thursday column was titled The Fiat-ization of the American male:
Can a nation of dudes whose sexual self-image was built on macho Jeeps survive the rise of the Little Mouse?. Is this satire? Parody? Maybe. But it’s ridiculous nonetheless. And that quote is only the jumping off point for the inanity.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court in its wisdom poured a large bucket of iced Pellegrino on that most delicate of objects, the American male libido.
It takes a certain kind of warped, phallic-obsessed logic to twist a business deal into a statement on male sexuality. Is the American male libido in fact a delicate thing, as Kamiya claims? I thought our society ensures that male lust is celebrated, not denigrated. Shows what I know.
From their effete command post in a metrosexual-dominated cafe on the Piazza Navona, snivelling Euro-socialists will whine that the Fiat deal is no biggie because American consumers have long since made their peace with cars made in Germany and Japan.
Effete! Metrosexual! Small cars equal a decrease in manliness, and most likely a decrease in heterosexuality! American men are not at all like those “Euro-socialists” because we are totally all about mounting the women, which is something we make clear by driving Hummers and not teeny tiny little clown cars. Mmm, nothing like xeno-homophobia on a Sunday afternoon.
Whether or not this deal makes business sense for Chrysler’s employees and shareholders — who now include the American people — is not within my area of expertise. But a much more serious problem looms: the potentially deflating effects on 100 million American men of outsourcing their sexual self-image to a company whose most famous product was known as the “little mouse.”
Are we back to that old canard of a man is only a man if he’s wielding an appendage of a certain length? A word of wisdom here: “Size matters not. Judge me by my size do you? As well you should not.” Sometimes Yoda really says it best. So does BeckySharper. A car is NOT a penis. A roaring engine does NOT equal ejaculation. A flat tire is NOT a sign from God that you need a Viagra prescription. And Fiat (maker of small cars) taking over Chrysler (maker of not-so-small cars) does NOT signify that America is experiencing dick shrinkage in these troubled times.
But with one rash, emasculating decision, the Supreme Court has drained the oil out of our national crankcase. The merger of Fiat and Chrysler means that the all-American era of he-man Jeeps, phallocentric Chargers and randy Rams has yielded to humiliating automotive domination by a country whose most famous building cannot even attain full verticality.
How gob-smackingly idiotic (and unoriginal)! Kamiya goes on to say, “As George Herbert Walker Bush and John Wayne Bobbitt said, ‘This will not stand.’” If you’re trying to come across as making a reasoned argument, invoking a batterer like Bobbitt is not the way to do it. If America truly is being “emasculated”, does that mean we have to equate the country I live in with John Wayne Bobbitt? And would a little emasculation be that bad if it meant we could boot articles like this to the curb? Or maybe we’re supposed to just lop of the phallic state of Florida and let it sail into the Caribbean — and make sure arguments like Kamiya’s float away with it.
*The title of the post was inspired after watching way too much Flight of the Conchords and getting “A Kiss is Not a Contract” stuck in my head.
There is something to be said about a man who equates his vehicle with his testes. That this got published instead of tossed into the reject bin with a sneer says something about the editor. And that is they are both insecure asshats with gas-guzzling Hummers. Ladies, do not sleep with these men! Instead, kick them in their *ahem* Hummers.
This is why I give a 2nd look to any man who drives a Prius.
You’re not really a man unless you’re getting fewer than 25 miles per gallon, dontcha know?
I think that the description of male libido as “delicate” means it *has* to be satire. Because no manly man who’s manly enough to kvetch about this would actually own up to any part of his manly manliness being delicate, right?
But the part where he uses — you called it exactly — xeno-homophobia as his humorous paintbrush of choice makes this Satire Fail. Damn, when are we going to learn how to make fun of the American Male without comparing him to some innocent bystander (that we’ve had to therefore set up as Lesser)?
(sorry about the incoherent. woke up to find the household was out of coffee!)
actually, DangerMouse, you’re not a man unless you’re giving the middle finger to the environment.
Parody/satire shouldn’t tacitly agree with the foolishness it mocks. I’m with Cheryl: Satire FAIL.
And we can add this to the long, long list of ‘oh, what about the poor menz??’ essays that this recession has produced. I’m looking forward to a better economy simply so that it will end all the jeremiads about the sad state of the male ego.
@Cheryl: I feel like the “delicate” thing is a reflection of the perception that male desires are unfairly stifled unlike they were in the “good old days” when men could exercise their libidos with absolutely no recourse. Now the poor men have to worry about actually causing offense!
Men who actually believe that bigger is better are entirely missing the point of the phrase “Compensating for something.” In that it applies more to emotional maturity and self-esteem than it does to schlong-size.
This may be “satire” as the bigots define it. People don’t actually want to find themselves criticized. They’d rather laugh along as their “satire” confirms everything they already believed. Especially if it’s everything they already believed about minorities, penises, and women.
Satire was always best written outside of the mainstream anyway.
[...] The Chrysler/Fiat Merger will emasculate the dudes?! Just for clarification – A Car is Not a Penis [...]
Satire FAIL, totally. “Cars are penises! Ha ha, I’m joking! But seriously: Cars are penises. And penises are serious business. Ha ha, just kidding! Or am I?” The whole piece — which I’m glad is being written up here — smacks of the kind of back-slapping frat-house jokes where dings at the, ahem, “male ego” serve merely to reinforce male privilege even though they appear, on the surface, to undermine it.
I… It… I…
I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just say that every time I see a Hummer, a truck with tires bigger than me, or a phallic sportscar on the road, I yell, “Sorry about your penis!” towards the car.
I like to joke about this with my guy. We all know that the size of a man’s endowment is directly inverse to the size of his vehicle, and my guy is exclusively a cyclist…
There is a direct correlation between car and penis size – in the UK, we call it BCSD syndrome*. I can’t believe you Yanks didn’t know that!
*Big Car, Small Dick.