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Why Hertz Won't Get My Business

I think capitalism works. I generally like to continue doing business with companies that I have used before. I have had the same insurance company for 30 years. I like that I get to spend my money the way I see fit and give my patronage to whomever I like. I am not trying to start a movement, incite folks to boycott or to take any sort of stand with me, but I do want to tell all six of my readers that I will not be renting a car from Hertz in the near future because of their new commercial campaign. It ticked me off. I find it an insult to men and women. Yeah, I have a sense of humor. A rather keen one actually. I don't find the Hertz "gas or brake" campaign funny.

I am an equal opportunity satirist. I think folks are easy to poke fun at. All of them. Male, female, democrat, republican, old and young. OK, I especially enjoy poking fun at democrats. They make it so darned easy. But this commercial that Hertz is so proud of irritates me. Individually each little scenario is funny.... except that it's the women who are given all the power. I am offended for men everywhere as they are portrayed as fearful and inept in each little vignette.

Why is it that it's OK to sacrifice the confidence of young men and portray them as fearful losers as long as women aren't made to look that way? OK yeah, the woman dressing the frog before its dissection is moronic, but she touches the frog and you know from the look on the boys face during that skit that he has no desire to touch the dead frog. Seems to me that women don't want equality in our culture, they want to flex their superiority muscles at every turn of the road. I am a strong, capable woman who is sick to death of men being treated like second class citizens. Where are the feminists with principles of equality now? Laughing their butts off without a second thought to how commercials like this shape the minds of young male people. They don't count.

Haven't we learned anything from Jane Elliot's experiment? How we treat people matters. How we portray people matters. Or maybe we are stuck with Orwell's Animal Farm. All of us are created equal, some are more equal than others. Discrimination is OK as long as it is couched as "just kidding" or in fun and I am not the target. Would my reaction have been different if the role of gas and break had changed in the various vignettes? You bet, but it didn't. You've come a long way baby but are you're just too stubborn or stupid to admit that woman have become the overbearing chauvinists we complained about men being during the 60s?






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