You may not remember William Bennett: he was some Reagan appointee who for a while was making a real industry out of telling people they had terrible morals in the mid-90s. No, really, he wrote a book called “The Book of Virtues” to preach to people how to live a more moral life.
Then it came out he’d gambled away millions. Whoops! And then he said something horribly racist! Double whoops!
Anyway, Bennett’s latest book “Consarnit, Vaginas Are Ruining Everything” “The Book of Man: Readings On The Path to Manhood” needs promotion, so he wrote the single most hilariously tone-deaf column about gender relations you’ll ever come across.
But we’re not bringing it up for the feminism part, although we’ve got to note that a lot of what Bennett is freaking out about is just women catching up from, you know, being consigned solely to the role of wife and mother that society has moved on from. We’re bringing it up for the gaming part.
First, Bennett says that 18-to-34 year old men spend more time gaming than 12-to-17 year old boys. Apparently this is supposed to be evidence of immaturity or something. Later he insists video games offer distorted images of masculinity for “fatherless boys,” you know, because mothers are completely incapable of explaining fantasy to an eight-year-old. Then the editor caps it all off by including a photo of some model whose face we don’t even see posing with a controller he has no idea how to use.
I’d like to be offended, I really would, but I just can’t do it. Dear CNN: running stuff like this is why everybody under the age of 30 gets their news from Jon Stewart.