I completely agree that the patriarchy hurts men too. And that if I were a man, I would not want to be portrayed as a massive idiot in the general media. However, I also think it’s true that there are men out there who use this portrayal to their advantage.

Take for example the commercials featured in Sarah Haskin’s Target Women: Doofy Husbands (http://current.com/items/90569059_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-doofy-husbands.htm). In these ads, men are too incompetent to do housework/chores. They have no basic life skills. But ultimately, the fault in the ad still lies with the women. After all, they should have KNOWN that their husbands were too stupid to do anything. The man might be dumb, but the woman is DUMBER for letting him do anything in the first place. (Note in particular the ad Haskins addresses about killing weeds. The woman begins the ad by saying “maybe it’s my fault…”.) And this trope is just as true in real life. There are men who will lay the responsibility for all decisions on wives/girlfriends/mothers so that there is someone to blame when the work doesn’t get done.

The same holds true for the Dodge Charger ad. Flackette was right when she pointed out that a lot of those “chores” don’t have anything to do with women. But if a man can make it SEEM as though his wife/girlfriend is the witch who forces him to get to work on time, that’s one less challenge of adulthood he has to accept responsibility for. He’s already established that it’s his wife’s job, so when he doesn’t show up on time one day, it isn’t really his fault. She just wasn’t enough of a nag to get him there.

My point, made shorter, is this: when you have privilege, the ability to be doofy (and blame someone else for said doofiness) is just another facet of that privilege.