The Macho Dad Point Of Confusion
It’s good to be a macho dad for boys in some ways, but there is a bigger picture here we seem to be missing.
There is a definite social narrative of the last decade that men are either “being replaced” or masculinity is “shifting” in some ways, causing lots of moral panic regarding whether “the boys are all right.” There is a concern that some young men are leaning rightward, i.e. “the boys are going MAGA,” which has some validity, although I am not sure how much validity it has. At the same time, lots of boys are pretending (or actually) to be more liberal in order to get laid.
If you’re familiar with Scott Galloway, most of his stuff on young men is pretty good, although he is clearly an aggrieved white male despite how rich and notable he is. Odd. Anyway, this clip has been making some rounds:
The conservative media loved parts of this segment because he sends Mika into a tailspin regarding how bad it is for young people right now, and Mika tries to clap back and sounds like a whiny liberal. It’s tailor-made for Daily Wire folks to then comment on, although they need to split the atom and claim America is going great for young people — while also telling you that you need to realize Biden is failing us all and we must vote differently in November. Nice. A tight-rope!
If you actually watch the clip above, it is straight from an ideological playbook. Galloway begins by talking about “high-earners in blue states,” alluding to the fact that most of the table he’s sitting at are those types of people, i.e. Willie Geist, who makes $5M a year from NBC and MSNBC. I bet “Morning Joe” himself makes way more than that.
So Galloway starts that way, and he spouts off a lot of quotes — if you have seen clips of him before or listened to his podcast(s), none of it is new — but then he slips up near the end of the clip.
Someone asks: “Why is financial literacy so bad?” A good question! And as he’s answering, Galloway says:
“I see this in my own home. My son can do integers, but he doesn’t understand credit card debt or mortages.”
A-HA!
You see, though: what is being said there is not the responsibility of a school, per se. While it would be nice if high schools had classes on interest rates and debt and how credit cards work and what a mortgage is and what escrow means and all that, that doesn’t happen and probably won’t happen because it’s better for the top of American society if people don’t understand those things.
But what Galloway did in that moment was tell on himself.
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