Remember John McCain’s “Obama fame” epiphany during the 2008 presidential elections? His negative ad pegged Obama as out of touch and the “world’s biggest celebrity”, pejoratively splicing in clips of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton with crowd shots of Obama rallies as the Democratic contender drew record numbers both at home and internationally.  Reactions abounded. Paris Hilton struck back with this parody ad about the “wrinkly white haired guy”, the “oldest celebrity in the world”.  The media was abuzz as, at least temporarily, the message of Obama’s supposedly counterproductive celebrity seemed to stick with some voters. But ultimately the roadblock proved incapable of doing any real damage and the young Democrat rode his wave of popularity all the way to a very decisive November 4th win.  The raw celebratory energy worldwide was palpable.  Gone was the bumbling, trigger-happy Texan who had infuriated world citizenry with his failure of a foreign policy and the near-sighted disaster of an economic policy that had brought the world to its knees. Impossibly high expectations and desperate hopes for something far better were pinned on the new guy. Conservatives prayed for the bubble to burst while liberals crossed themselves, willing global patience with the new administration.

Skip to the present.  As fickle as the American electorate can be, and despite his substantial drop in domestic popularity, Obama’s international celebrity and popularity have remained high.  While American memory of the blunders of his predecessor may be fading, international scars are still keenly felt and there’s still much hope in the new president.  Cracks are appearing though.  Take recent daggers thrown in the UK over the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Conservative UK commentator, Norman Tebbit, recently called Obama’s approach to the BP disaster a “crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance.”

The source of UK anger against Obama stems from what is seen as an overly aggressive stance against BP.  Tebbit’s rant finds at least partial backing in some of Obama’s BP-related posturing:

“crude” = “I don’t sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar… we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.” (Obama’s June 8 NBC interview)

“bigoted” = The relentless attacks on Obama’s attacks on BP as the disaster spirals completely out of control and Obama plays into British accusations of of “‘buck passing’ and ‘beating up’ the British-based company” (Daily Mail) instead of problem-solving.

“xenophobic” – Obama’s occasional use of the name “British Petroleum” that BP dropped years ago and therefore (it can be argued), playing this up as an issue with Britain when really this is the mistake of a multinational, a large stake of which is American.

“Winding up a hate campaign against the British is not a terribly smart policy. It may win Mr. Obama political support amongst the less well-informed voters right now, but the long-term effects are less sure. BP is also a major US company. Busting it might not be a very smart idea and not just on economic grounds. The message that non-US companies are likely to be treated as political punchbags would be a profoundly political message, too.”  (Tebbit)

Joining the ranks of political malcontents, Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, said that he was concerned about “anti-British rhetoric” and “name-calling” from American leaders.   And it’s not just a few oversensitive conservative politicos that are pissy: the UK’s Sunday Times quoted a survey that stated 64% of Brits and 47% of US residents claim Obama’s handling of the BP crisis hurt the relationship between the two countries and that in both countries, 22% of respondents went as far as calling Obama anti-British.

As exciting as this rift-rhetoric can be, much of the Anglo-American hand-wringing about it took place before a June 12 conversation in which Obama tried to soften the perceived attack on Britain over the disaster by saying that his unhappiness with BP had nothing to do with its British identity. Following the conversation, The Times‘s journalist Giles Whittel wrote: “The notion that American attacks on BP are anti-British is embarrassing. It is a fiction incubated by the thin-skinned, solipsistic and broadly anti- American world view that bubbles up like warm bitter in the best-kept villages of Little England whenever anyone in Washington has the temerity to break with the tradition of referring to the Old Country and its pretensions with anything other than awed admiration.”

Further evidence that Obama wanted to make peace?  He put beer on the table.  The trick worked a year ago when Obama invited black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and white Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to the White House for a beer after causing an uproar by saying the police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates, Jr. for disorderly conduct. This time around, Obama and Cameron wagered a beer over who would win the June 12 US/England World Cup game.  When the teams tied, the politicos presented each other with their respective beers and gushed about the special relationship between the two countries.

There’s even a chance that the Anglo-American relationship will improve after the BP fiasco.  The evidence? Obama’s gift-giving is improving.  A beer far outshines his last gift to a British PM.  In exchange for an ornate pen holder from former PM Gordon Brown, Obama presented the British leader with a set of DVDs that don’t even work in British players.

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Talk to enough of the American cultural elite about the upcoming World Cup and you’re bound to hear about those ignorant xenophobes in the fly-over states and their backwards claims that soccer is un-American and a gateway to socialism.  Unlike the demographics of soccer in the rest of the world where it is the game of the masses, the bulk of soccer in the United States is confined to women’s leagues, recent immigrant enclaves or upper middle class suburban communities where births are particularly awkward as one has to accommodate the silver spoon protruding from each babe’s rear.

Despite optimistic attempts at tapping into the star power of international brands like Beckham, Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States is at best considered an emerging league and, more frequently, is the butt of jokes in the American sporting world.  This truth puts America at odds with the rest of the world, not because anyone is defending the quality of the MLS (everyone agrees it sucks), but because soccer is, by far, the most popular sport in the world.

The World Cup is not only the biggest sporting event on the planet, IT IS THE BIGGEST EVENT, end of story.  FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, estimates the viewership of the 2006 World Cup final at 715 million viewers.  Despite this kind of worldwide interest in the sport, the average American is barely aware of the World Cup and is still saying things like, “If they got rid of the goal keepers I might watch it.”  The reasons for this kind of unawareness are complex.  Access is one of them. Twenty years ago, following major European games basically required learning a second language and hunting around for obscure international newspapers.  Even today, coverage of world soccer on American sports websites is thin.  But the problem is not just access.  You also have cultural crusaders in what How Soccer Explains the World‘s Franklin Foer calls the “anti-soccer lobby”.

Says Foer: “There exists an important cleavage between the parts of the country that have adopted soccer as its pastime and the places that haven’t.  And this distinction lays bare an underrated source of American cultural cleavage: globalization.”   The message is clear: parts of the country – the blue parts on the electoral map – tend to be more susceptible to globalization and are therefore more interested in a global phenomenon like soccer. The red states cling to guns and religion and baseball and shun outside influences like soccer. Zeroing in on the anti-soccer lobby, Foer sums up the haters’ sentiment as he quotes USA Today’s Tom Weir: “Hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pickup, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing with the remote control.”

Foer quotes prominent American conservative, former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp who, in 1986 said the following on the floor of Congress: “I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it”; that “a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist (sport).”  It seems that wild claims on the Congressional floor about creeping socialism never go out of style.

Foer also quotes radio shock jock Jim Rome who raved, “My son is not playing soccer.  I will hand him ice skates and a shimmering sequined blouse before I hand him a soccer ball.”  With this kind of rabid and fundamentally maddening reasoning adding to the national conversation, it is no wonder that many stay away from soccer.

Max Bergmann for the Huffington Post: “What is so bizarre about this is how much the neocons sound like American-hating Europeans. Both dismiss American talent, American enthusiasm for soccer, and American understanding of the game. Just as neocons — and other soccer-hating sports writers of my parents generation — insist that we don’t get soccer and don’t care, European soccer writers are right there with them saying that Americans don’t get it and don’t care.”

David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange / The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer, claims that American soccer fans  “tend to lean liberal”  like Holland’s national team because they are “predisposed to liking the country itself”.  He then waxes lyrical about how Holland “represents the best that bourgeois society has to offer: a genuine liberal spirit, the epitome of a certain idea of civilization.”

Soccer Against the Enemy’s Simon Kuper writes, “The game remains too good a way of understanding the world to discard.”  “In the States, being a New Fan is often a mark of being a cosmopolitan.  Soccer’s advance in the country is an idex of how American daily life is globalizing.  The two groups of Americans who are probably keenest on the game – immigrants and their direct descendants on the one hand, and the highly educated on the other – are precisely the most globalized Americans.” (He includes Obama, “the alleged West Ham fan… son of a U.S. born mother and immigrant father,” in this cross-section of America).

In The Ball is Round / A Global History of Soccer, David Goldblatt quotes British historian Eric Hobsbawm who wrote, “The twentieth century was the American century in every way but one: sport.”  Goldblatt says, “This is not exactly news to anyone, but it remains an extraordinary and under-explored anomaly; an almost unique reversal of the dominant patterns of global influence and power.”

So what should the future hold for America and soccer?  Will we continue to see the cultural cleavage grow as it is pushed up by soccer, or are there other options?  As a Swede I’ve had to nurse my own disappointment at not having Sweden qualify for this summer’s World Cup with the hope that the US will go far instead.  The US advanced to the quarter finals in what many considered the coming of age of the US team at the 2002 World Cup.  Americans that had previously not paid attention to soccer learned that the US could not only compete in the sport, but that it had a chance of dominating.   Although the 2006 World Cup was a disappointment, continued American successes, along with the forces of globalization will hopefully result in a burqa being tossed over our supple cleavage.  America has always enjoyed a new frontier to conquer.  Why not soccer?

“Soccer’s mission in the United States is not, I think, to supplement or challenge American football, baseball or basketball, but to offer a conduit to the rest of the world; a sporting antidote to the excesses of isolationism, a prism for understanding the world that the United States may currently shape but will increasingly be shaped by.”  (Goldblatt )

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YES, BEFORE YOU COMMENT, I TOO, HATE THE PLACEMENT OF THE PLAY BUTTON.  THANK YOU YOUTUBE:)

In this second episode of CultureMutterings I cover some of the ideas, fights and questions that have come up over the last few posts.  Hot topics: gay people in the military; the Icelandic sex industry; Joe the Plumber venting about how he wants to torture people and FOX News on the Congressional Budget Office.

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It’s the social conservative’s wet dream: Last week we learned that legislation had passed in Iceland banning all strip clubs.  Not only can you no longer run a strip club, but no business can profit from employee nudity in any way. So topless waitresses are out too.  There are signs that this momentum will result in a banning of the sex industry entirely. The legislation that passed on Wednesday last week is not the work of enterprising evangelicals or straight-laced rightists. Quite the contrary.  It is one of the most unique legislative milestones for the administration of Johanna Sigurdardottir, the first openly lesbian Prime Minister in the world.

This legislation that doubtless would win the approval of American “values” voters, was not inspired by religionists or indeed by any traditionalist undercurrent.  Though the Focus on the Family James Dobsons of the world would be delighted with this kind of an outcome,  this is the achievement of a small, hugely secular, socially progressive, Nordic state that England’s Guardian newspaper, calls “the world’s most feminist country”.

“It is pleasing how fresh the breeze of equality is at Althingi [the Icelandic parliament] these days,” said Siv Fridleifsdótttir of the Progressive Party, the bill’s first presenter (Icelandic newspaper Fréttabladid via Iceland Review Online).

Cut to the United States.  It’s been an interesting few weeks for gay rights.  On March 18, openly gay US infantry officer, Dan Choi, along with an outed officer, Capt. Jim Pietrangelo, chained themselves to the White House fence.  They did so in protest of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT), the US military policy that restricts the military from efforts to out service members or applicants that are gay, lesbian or bisexual, while still barring those that do come out from further service.  After coming out as gay on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show about a year ago, Dan Choi was issued a discharge letter from the military.  Choi has appealed the decision, and a final call has not yet been made.

On March 19, retired senior US military officer and NATO commander John Sheehan shocked the world with his logic in support of DADT.  Sheehan said that part of the reason for the 1995 massacre of 5,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica was the fact that there were gay soldiers among the Dutch UN peacekeeping troops that were protecting the Bosnian Muslim enclave. Sheehan made his statement before a Senate hearing on DADT.  The comments sparked Dutch outrage of biblical proportions, as well as worldwide criticism and disbelief.

What such statements reveal about the moth-eaten mindset of those that back the discrimination and deception inherent in DADT, is telling. Sheehan and like-minded antediluvians are so steeped in their anti-gay dogma that they are willing to make the issue one of life and death.  This is the antiquated language of DADT:  ”The prohibition against homosexual conduct is a longstanding element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service. … The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”

So basically, according to the military, gay people are bad for morale and order.  And according to religious conservatives, gays are a threat to the institution of marriage, the physical and psychological health of children and the moral condition of society as a whole.  What is wrong with these dinosaurs? It would behoove them to take a protracted soak in an Icelandic hot spring.  Has society fallen apart in Iceland with an openly gay person wielding the highest powers afforded to a citizen?  Has morale plummeted and chaos reigned?  Are children permanently scarred and is society taking a moral plunge? No, no and NO. Instead we have witnessed the kind of successful attack on the sex industry that most anti-gay, pro-DADT American leaders salivate just thinking about.

It is time for real equality in America.  We may differ in our views on homosexuality but surely, it is time to judge each person on their individual merits and potential, not their sexual orientation.  We are close to the finish line.  President Obama ran on a campaign promise to repeal DADT.  In his first State of the Union he again promised to do it.  May the tides of change hasten and may the insult to basic human equality that is DADT, become a thing of the past.

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Here goes the first video post.  The idea behind it is a beginning for what I am calling CultureMutterings – basically a video post about recent news, recent CultureMutt posts and reactions/rebuttals to some of the comments made on the posts.  This is my first stab at this and I am obviously highly camera trained…. enjoy

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It‘s been a battle between two of the best things about America:  Individual liberty on the one hand and shared responsibility on the other.   In the debate on health care we can’t resort to Dubya-style prattle that framed political dramas as a battle between good and evil.  It’s just not that simple.  There are good ideas and good people on both sides of this debate.  I don’t often speak in the first person on CultureMutt but I have no problem making this exception because of the extreme importance of what is at stake here.  I want to address this on as personal a level as possible.

Health care in America is an embarrassment, it is woefully inadequate and completely unacceptable in the world’s richest and most powerful country.  How is it that in America, the world’s sole superpower, we have huge slabs of the population that are one illness away from bankruptcy and devastating, personal failure?  How is it that insurance companies are able to deny people coverage based on pre-existing conditions?  This is cruel, this is heartless, this is fundamentally un-American.

I will admit that as a Swede, I often compare America to what I have in my country of birth.  Yes, Sweden has socialized medicine and yes, this does bias me in favor of providing health care as a right for all.  But I made a very conscious decision ten years ago to move to the United States.  The reason?  I still believe with all that is in me, that America is the land of opportunity.  I still believe that things – very good things – can be done in this country that cannot be done anywhere else.  I am proud of my adopted country and I defend it whenever I travel.  This is where I want to live and this is the country I am committed to on a level that makes me feel deeply invested in doing all I can to improve this country for all that live here.

What is special and what is unique in America is an unwavering belief in the possibilities of what we can achieve as individuals and what we can achieve together.  No other country on earth can claim the kind of environment that America offers to all that live here: superior opportunities to thrive and prosper.  I will admit that I came to America because I personally wanted to thrive and prosper and be supported in my drive to do so as an individual.  But having lived in America for 10 years now, I can say that the American promise has proved to be about more than just individual success: it is about our shared destiny as a people.  The good news about America is that this is a country where we give a damn.  This is a country of compassion.  This is a country where we care about other people; where we pick up our fallen in battle; where we work TOGETHER in the hope of improving our collective existence and that of future generations.  No matter how controversial, infuriating or deeply disappointing the path, we CANNOT allow the firestorm that is the health care debate to allow us to forget about this fundamental truth.  There is a better way than this.

Let’s not pretend that the health care reform bill that will be voted upon tomorrow in the House is without fault.  It certainly has weaknesses and compromises.  I am tempted to get on my soapbox as usual and pontificate on what the bill REALLY should look like but this time I won’t.  This moment is too important.  The bottom line is that our current health care has failed.  People are hurting, people are vulnerable and the time for change has come.  Just as it took courage and overlooking imperfections and potential political ramifications to vote in Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor decades ago, it will take courage to bring health care reform today.  The time for stalling is over.  This country is better than this.  We are better than this.  And the America health care reform will bring is better than this. May the House prove it by voting for Health Care Reform tomorrow.  In the words of President Obama this afternoon, “Let’s get this done!”.

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If genocide denial doesn’t work, maybe mass deportation will.  Or so goes the apparent logic of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Incensed that Sweden and the United States have recently decided to call the WWI era massacres of approximately 1.5 million Armenians “genocide,” Erdogan told the BBC’s Turkish service yesterday that, “If necessary, I may have to tell… 100,000 (Armenians) to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don’t have to keep them in my country.”

Despite Turkey’s aspirations to join the European Union, Erdogan also recalled Turkey’s ambassadors to Stockholm and Washington and, according to Reuters, “warned they could hurt a fragile effort to reconcile with Christian Armenia after a century of hostility.”  This echoes Turkey’s recall of its ambassador to Canada last year after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper dared to mention the genocide.

Turkey denies that 1.5 million Armenians were killed in Turkey, although it concedes the killing of Christians as the Ottoman Empire collapsed almost a century ago. As more historians and foreign governments join together in condemning Turkey’s actions and its denial of genocide, the pressure is mounting on Turkey to admit to the sins of the past.

Erdogan has so far been incapable of anything but weaksauce rants about the “Armenian diaspora” that he claims is spreading falsehood and tarnishing Turkey’s reputation.  So far his behavior is amounting to international embarrassment for Turkey as Erdogan’s deportation threats are seen as overblown and petty, as well as being fairly hollow.  According to Reuters,  Aris Nalci, an editor at Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos, said such remarks are not new for Erdogan. “We are not taking it as a serious threat,” Nalci said.

Serious or not, Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarksyan replied with the understatement of the year: “This kind of political statement does not help improve relations between the two states.”  Last year, Armenia and Turkey made the progressive decision to start diplomatic relations and open their shared border.  Neither government has ratified the deal though and there has already been furious back and forth with both governments accusing the other of rewriting the text of the original agreement. Erdogan’s latest antics will no doubt add to the fun and further complicate any chance of success.

But let’s not be too surprised at Erdogan’s badly chosen words.  Prior actions prove him well-deserving of The Atlantic‘s description as “sometimes-dyspeptic.” At last year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,  The Atlantic reports that “the roughest moment came when Erdogan accused Israel’s Shimon Peres of being a killer. ‘Peres, you are older than me,’ Erdogan said. ‘Your voice comes out in a very high tone. And the high tone of your voice has to do with a guilty conscience. My voice, however, will not come out in the same tone.’ He went on, ‘When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.’ ”

Peres tried to respond but, as this YouTube clip faithfully captures, it was too late: Erdogan had decided to storm off the stage.

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Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks was back in the news this week after it had been discovered that seven arrests had been made in Ireland due to a plot to kill him. In 2007, Vilks’ work depicting the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog was published in the Swedish Nerikes Allehanda newspaper. Vilks’ work had originally been featured in an arts project before it was published by the paper. It caused widespread anger in the Muslim world as well as a bounty of $100,000 to be placed on his head by a group linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq and, as the BBC reports, “a 50% bonus if he was ‘slaughtered like a lamb’ by having his throat cut.”

After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and created the country’s biggest international blowup since World War II, you would have thought basic common sense would have discouraged any similarly-inspired artwork.  But no, Vilks carried on and his work caused such an uproar that Sweden’s embassy in Pakistan had to express regret over his art and the subsequent hurt caused while stating that it could not prevent the publication of the material because it would interfere with the freedom of the press.

Vilks at the time chimed in saying that his work was art and told the Associated Press, “I’m not against Islam. Everybody knows that…”  The Christian Science Monitor quoted Vilks after the $100,000 bounty had been placed on his head: “I suppose this makes my art project a bit more serious. It’s also good to know how much one is worth.”  The same article reports that Vilks created his controversial art “as an editorial comment on self-censorship, freedom of expression, and religion.”

The BBC, in an August 31, 2007 piece, quotes Pakistan’s foreign ministry on “what it described as a growing tendency ‘among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide… Such acts deeply undermine the efforts of those who seek to promote respect and understanding among religions and civilisations…’ ”

How do you react to such sentiment?  You could go the route of conservative political commentator, Tony Blankley.  After the cartoonist behind the original Danish work, Kurt Westergaard, was attacked in his home by a Somali Muslim, Blankley railed against the fact that “most European journalistic commentary argued that Western writers and artists should, for prudence sake, abstain from such (allegedly blasphemous) expression..”

Said Blankley, “…it is worse than imprudent for Americans (or Europeans) to give up freedoms and ways of life that have been defended for centuries by the martial sacrifice of our ancestors (and current warriors) — and by the intellectual courage of our writers and artists — just because our morally feeble, self-proclaimed ‘educated class’ and elites have lost the will to defend our civilization.”

What Blankley seems to miss is that the problem has very little to do with defending Western civilization and every bit to do with basic intercultural relations.  Just because the free world embraces freedom of speech does not mean that all forms of reason and restraint and respect for cultural and religious differences should be cast to the wind.  Freedom of religion and expression are a basic right in the free world but there are limits; anti-hate speech legislation exist in a number of Western countries that prevent expression of hateful rhetoric based on factors such as race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

With current anti-Islamic sentiment at record highs, there is little difference between irresponsible (blasphemous, in the eyes of some) art depicting Muhammad, and hateful propaganda.  Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are important rights and should remain so.  But cultural cretins like Vilks should think carefully about the responsibilities that come with such freedoms.

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“Would you give the fat guy next to you the same deference as the tall guy behind you? Why or why not?”  Slate asked the question after the Twitter/media storm surrounding director/actor Kevin Smith’s February 13, 2010 ejection from a Southwest flight for being too fat.

“Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?” Smith tweeted.  As he landed in Burbank, after being seated on another flight, Smith followed up with “Hey @SouthwestAir! I’ve landed in Burbank. Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.”.

And Smith did not stop there.  “Go F**k Yourself , Southwest Airlines” was the title of his SMODCAST (116) in which he blasted the airline for being the “Greyhound of the Air” and swore he would never fly with them again.  Wikipedia claims that Smith pummeled Southwest with 24 further YouTube videos about the event.

Southwest apologized to Smith and responded on its blog in a post titled Not so Silent Bob, citing the comfort of other passengers and the priority of a “timely (emergency) exit from the aircraft” as priorities that led to their actions.  Smith’s Twitter followers were divided in their response to his anger.  Of course, Smith had sympathizers.   But Slate did a good job of compiling the comments of some of his followers that felt Southwest was justified in its actions and that Smith’s tubbiness was the actual problem:

1. “sitting next to someone bulging into my seat for 6 hours is agonizing”
2. “unfortunately each ticket is allocated a weight.”
3. “access 2 every option for weight loss yet u don’t take advantage. why?”
4. “You’re big, you’re rich, pay for the 2nd seat and stop griping.”
5. “why weren’t you first class(?)“

These replies may be appropriate for Twitter but the PR nightmare that hit Southwest from Smith’s new media-savvy fury was enough to remind any company that anything that even vaguely resembles discrimination against obese people has huge firestorm potential.  The anti-PC crowd will jump on this as another example of what they see as the gutless tendency of mainstream culture to label issues as taboo and therefore necessitating extreme tiptoeing and denial.  But then this is the same crowd of buffoons that blasts gays, thinks racial humor is funny and speak nostalgically of a time when shooting your mouth off was the norm.  “Eat less” would be their advice to the Smiths of the world.  “Talk less” seems to be society’s reply to them.

So how do you appropriately treat the issue of obesity in American culture? On the one hand we push fad diets and the lean ideal, and on the other, our lifestyle (left unchecked) leads straight to plus-sized waist lines.  If you attempt systemic change through education, you could end up like Michelle Obama, who, in her campaign against childhood obesity, was heavily critiqued for speaking of her concern for her own children’s body mass index (BMI) woes. Denial won’t work either: It will only ensure that our next 50 years look like the previous half-century of fast-food-fueled fatness.  It seems innovation and some risk-taking could help.  For all their faults, Americans have an impressive ability to rise to the occasion and rethink life.  This could come in useful.  Until then, lift your armrest for Kevin Smith.

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Here’s a fact to chew on: 45 % of men ‘fess up to wearing a condom that did not fit them in the last three months. Before you get all riled up about how irresponsible this is, understand the pressure that is on both males and the condom industry.  Just like the “no idea is a bad idea” mantra in conventional brainstorming, “no penis is a small penis” seems to be the enduring anthem of the condom industry.

Think about it: What condom manufacturer in their right mind is going to call one of their sizes “small”?  As Menachem Kaiser in “The Challenge of Marketing Small Condoms” (The Atlantic) puts it, “There are products where smallness is a marketing virtue, like cellphones or thong underwear. But small condoms are a marketing nightmare.” The article points out that the closest a condom manufacturer comes to indicating size is the carefully-worded “Snugger Fit” marketed by LifeStyles.

The confusion around condom sizing and the cultural pressure to avoid admitting to anything less than a crankshaft of a penis has obvious sexual health repercussions. Kaiser says of those men who admitted to wearing badly-fitting sheaths: “The misfits were significantly more likely to report breakage and slippage, along with difficulty reaching orgasm, both for their partners and for themselves, and a host of other sexual mishaps. Not surprisingly, men with ill-fitting condoms were more likely to take them off before sex was even over — all of which adds up to a massive failure for the one job a condom exists to fulfill.”

So how do you market minus-sized condoms to a “size matters”, “bigger is better” culture? You lie. Kaiser points out that Dr. Bill Yarber, of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Indiana, recommends re-labeling small condoms as “large”, regular as “extra-large” and so on.  Of course, as Kaiser points out, this invites ridiculous confusion and, “Yarber’s plan would have the true-to-life Magnum man in a pinch: his previously large-enough condoms would suddenly be a tight fit.”

Other options include spray-on condoms that are too much drama/time.  Also, vendors like TheyFit offer 70 different sizes that virtually guarantee a match for each man, but this craves some time-sensitive measuring and, Kaiser notes, “The site thoughtfully warns, ‘Watch out for paper cuts!’ ”

In a follow-up article to Kaiser’s, Judy Berman in Salon wrote, “Shocker: Small Condoms Don’t Sell”. Berman’s conclusion: “…perhaps what needs to change, if we really want our protection to protect us, isn’t whether we call a condom ‘small’ or ‘large’ so much as our own harsh judgments about guys’ penis size.”  But let’s be real, we’ve gone for untold millennia pontificating on penises and that is as likely to change as is the size of the male ego.

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Bjorn Karlman

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