It's Hard Out Here for a Cartoon Viking

One David S. Rose of Silver Spring writes in today's letters to the WaPo editorial page about a woefully slighted and often dangerously stereotyped group: men. Specifically, white, male, cartoon vikings. Yes David S. Rose, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevera all rolled into one, sternly admonishes the Post for running a "Hagar the Horrible" strip in which Hagar is bandaged because his wife clocked him in the head with her iron. Rose writes, "Attention is only beginning to be paid to the physical and psychological harm to men and boys when men are routinely depicted as fools on television and in movies and when boys' academic performance and dropout rates are at a crisis level. Such stereotypes can no longer be played for laughs."

Yes David S. Rose, you've hit the nail on the head. It's not pitifully funded schools and rampant poverty causing boys to perform poorly in school and drop out, it's a cartoon viking getting hit on the head with an iron. And for this blow to men to come in such an incredibly significant media venue as "Hagar the Horrible..." (One wonders how the strip's eight readers ever managed to decide who was going to write the letter to the Post about its certain A-bomb-like impact on society.)

I salute you David S. Rose, for having the courage to stand up and say "Hey, violence against cartoon vikings isn't funny, and it can be easily extrapolated to be a free pass for the scads of straw men, oops, I mean hordes of people, who just haven't ever given men the support they need in this society." Too many people are falling all over themselves to advocate forcefully against poverty, war and disease. Thank you for having the courage to turn your mighty pen to this particular cause. Fight on good soldier, fight on.

Next week: Rose blasts Andy Capp's wife for forcing him to sleep on the couch, creating a culture of psychological abuse and spinal ailments, and by extension, an increase in divorce rates and children being born to single mothers.