{"id":1110,"date":"2004-09-28T06:22:31","date_gmt":"2004-09-28T14:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/28\/rick-marin-is-an-asshole-but-at-least-hes-thin\/"},"modified":"2004-09-28T06:22:31","modified_gmt":"2004-09-28T14:22:31","slug":"rick-marin-is-an-asshole-but-at-least-hes-thin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1110","title":{"rendered":"Rick Marin is an asshole, but at least he's thin"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you feel like getting a good blast of anti-fat bigotry combnied with clueless sexism, be sure to read this article about the fat dad\/thin mom combo that’s become common on family sitcoms, entitled “Father Eats Best.”<\/a> Rick Marin, best known for his kiss-and-tell book “Cad<\/a>,” offers a sort of detached ironic whining about what an insult it is to real-life fathers to depict them as fat, mixed with fat jokes recycled from his middle-school days (one show is described as starring “John Goodman’s jowls”).<\/p>\n

To me, the chubby-hubby-slight-wife trend suggests job segregation at work. In TV acting, it’s more acceptable for men to be fat than women; it’s also more acceptable for fat men to appear in comedies than in dramas. (John Goodman has successfully played dramatic and comedy roles on stage and in movies, but on TV he’s been cast exclusively in comedies).<\/p>\n

Given that, it’s no surprise to see a bunch of talented fat male actors gravitating towards TV sit-coms. And it’s especially unsurprising that the women cast on these shows are thin and TV-attractive; after all, that’s what women on all<\/i> TV shows, even feminist-y shows like Gilmore Girls <\/i>and Stong Medicine<\/i>, look like.<\/p>\n

But talking about something like plain old-fashioned sexism isn’t hip and ironic, and Marin is one of those writers who has never published a thought that hasn’t been market-tested for hipness and irony.<\/p>\n

Marin also follows the lead of men’s righters by complaining about how the male leads in these shows are often presented as incompetant bumblers who have to be corrected by their more competant spouses.<\/p>\n

What he doesn’t mention is that being a bumbler means that you have the lead role (think of Lucy on I Love Lucy<\/i>); the reason more sit-com dads are bumblers is because the lead roles on family sit-coms usually go to men. (On the underappreciated Life With Bonnie<\/i>, Bonnie is the bumbler and her husband is the bland, competant one.)<\/p>\n

Although Marin makes plenty of jokes about fat men, he reserves his ugliest barb for fat women: “When I flipped to ‘Trading Spouses’ on Fox I saw two moderately chubby husbands with supersized spouses. No wonder they were trading them.” (Maybe he should take some of those Cad <\/i>royalties to a therapist and work on those misogyny issues a bit?)<\/p>\n

Incidently, reading Marin’s own site <\/a>makes it clear he considers himself quite dishy – “He’s the funny, sweet guy with the great eyes who asks you a million questions and seems mesmerized by every reply. He takes you on the greatest, longest date of your life.” In contrast, according to one of his ex-girlfriends<\/a>, he’s boring in bed (“…you drunkenly lose interest and let him know that he’s welcome to finish without you, thanks”) and strongly resembles Milhouse from The Simpsons<\/i>. But hey, at least he’s not fat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you feel like getting a good blast of anti-fat bigotry combnied with clueless sexism, be sure to read this article about the fat dad\/thin mom combo that’s become common on family sitcoms, entitled “Father Eats Best.” Rick Marin, best … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}