There’s this “Ask your boyfriend/husband” trend (I’m guessing on TikTok?) where women get assignments from the motherhive to ask their male significant others questions.
I don’t know how often they get their assignments. My wife so far has gotten two.
In the first one, they had her ask me if I thought I could land a commercial jetliner. I wrote about it here, but the short answer is really just another question:
Under what conditions would someone ask me, a 50-something lower-middle-class journalist, to land a commercial airliner?
I answered “yes” because if they’re asking me, that means we’re crashing and they’re looking for someone to blame.
Come Fly with Me, Hypothetically
Wherein I discuss the likelihood of me successfully landing a commercial jet.
The latest assignment was to find out how often we (male significant others) think about the Roman Empire. Again (as far as I can tell) most of us answered “often” with improbable numbers ranging between four times a week to every day.
I write about religious scammers and pedophile priests, my numbers are off the chart (if you don’t know why, ask your Roman-Empire-bothering significant other).
As far as I can tell, these questions are meant to be reductive, to demonstrate that, yes all (White) men of a certain cultural status are essentially Tim Allen—know-it-all boobs who will say anything to make themselves more impressive.
Welcome to 1990s comedy, ladies. Let me tell you about the airline food on my flight here.
The day my wife asked me the Roman Empire thing, I had been working on a story about Garth Brooks. As part of my research, I spent several hours deconstructing “All I Want to Do” by Sheryl Crow.
Additionally, I made and deleted about 12 snarky posts referencing Hannah Arendt, who finds her way into every moronic, half-assed self-help influencer’s advice.
That doesn’t go very far to show I’m not a know-it-all, but I encourage readers of all genders to ask their significant others how many hours this month they’ve thought about Sheryl Crow or Hannah Arendt.
It will be more than you think.
Since seeing the above ad on Facebook I’ve decided to include a question as part of my postscript. I hope it will show how we’re all a little less stereotypical than the motherhive believes.
As always, you’re encouraged to answer in the comments below or in the chat.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
PostScript
The correct Hannah Arendt quote is, “When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.”
People shorthand it to: “When everybody’s guilty, nobody is.” Management gurus and influencers often go with “when everyone is responsible (for whatever bullshit thing I’m giving advice about) no one is.”
It’s less about prosecuting Nazis and more about persecuting employees, but whatever. God Bless America.
Here’s a question:
How long do you sit at a red light before deciding it’s broken and driving on?
TR
It depends on the vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic. If the signal skips an entire cycle, usually anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds, I will start to look for alternatives. That may include turning right to subsequently do a u-turn. BTW, I think about the Roman Empire a lot because of what is evolving in our country, the American Empire.
Seriously. It’s not as if history hasn’t provided a checklist of what happens when political corruption and “othering” become the norm.