A Week on the Wagon: Embowelment Edition

In the annals of history, few exhortations have been as universally stirring to mankind as the words that DadWagon’s own Christopher Bonanos composed yea this very afternoon. After a week in which he said “Meh” to Father’s Day and “mush” to a children’s classic, after throwing in the towel in the millennia-old gender wars, he turned his attention to the most vital of human endeavors—diaper advertising—and raised a sonorous cry to the heavens. Quoth this Greek: “Bring on the brown!”

But once the brown has been brought, what then do we do with the do, dear brothers? Why, we call up Theodore, who declared himself useless except when it comes to cleaning up feces. He was perhaps being a little unfair to himself, as he possesses other skills, such as making fun of that poor schmo Jon Gosselin and finding the sunny side of the divorce battle that has torn his life apart. A talented man, that Mr. Ross.

Nathan, meanwhile, spent the week glued to the television, tearing himself away from a Stanley Cup (right?) match only long enough to tease stormsweeper with the prospect of a Father’s Day handjob, then turning right back to the boob toob in anticipation of some hot gay daddies (on CNN). And then, without a trace of irony, he wondered whether all his gadgetry, Twittery and bloggerizing were distracting him from the business of fatherhood.

While some might criticize this form of LCD OCD, I prefer to think Nathan’s simply following the government’s advice on being a good father, which I recently unearthed (in order to mock). I guess I was in a mocking mood, because I also laughed at my daughter’s cataclysmic tumble on a Chinatown sidewalk (no wonder she pretends not to know me), the almost-sale of a baby at Walmart ($25), and the Taiwanese government’s attempt to convince its citizens to procreate.

The four of us also Tantrumed over some chick’s declaration of the “End of Men,” and although we came to no clear resolution, I think we can all agree that while men haven’t ended, this week has. See you on Monday!

How to Sell a Pee-Sopper

OrganicBabyFood1We here at Dadwagon have had plenty to say about the marketing of diapers, on the grounds that it’s both ridiculous and sexist. What we haven’t seen is an ad that deals with the contents of a disposable diaper. Disgustingly.

Till now! Take a very close look, via Copyranter, at this ad. (Yes, it’s for baby food, not diapers, but I have a point to make here.) Those green blotches are little country scenes, filled with presumably sweet-smelling meadows and trees. But view the photo quickly, from a normal distance, and it’s more like the usual diaper leavings.

I’m in favor of it, frankly. The customary TV spots in which a flask of sterile blue liquid is poured into an absorbent surface have always bugged me, because all they do is scream THIS IS NOT URINE, HONESTLY, ABSOLUTELY, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PEE, LA LA LA, NOTHING ABOUT PEE GOING ON HERE, AND DON’T EVEN TALK TO US ABOUT FECES, WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS! If you ask me, they’ll do a lot better with potty humor and poop jokes. Every new parent of this generation, or the next few generations for that matter, has been reared in a high-irony environment, and there’s no reason to dance around this stinkiest of subjects. Literalism has already come to feminine-hygiene ads, which have ceded those running-on-the-beach-in-gauzy-lighting moments in favor of (gasp) actually showing us what a tampon looks like, and, in one memorable ad, even showing an abstracted red dot. When it comes to diapering, we’re still stuck in 1960. I say, bring on the brown.

A touch of TV power

One thing that stood out in my most recent trip to Russia: the Kremlin could care less about what magazines print. Seriously. Magazines, radio, even some newspapers are allowed to criticize Putin, Medvedev, whomever. Yes, there are some taboo topics (New Times editor Evgenia Albats’s office was recently raided after she criticized the riot police). And you still should have a good estate lawyer before reporting on corrupt businessmen.

But print escapes the overwhelming Kremlin pressure that TV news faces, for one reason alone: Print doesn’t matter; TV does. The clever autocrats in the Kremlin understand that television is the only real way to sway public opinion, to rally them to a cause, or to tell them the story of what is actually happening in a country.

Which is why I am reminded that television in the U.S. can still move the conversation in good directions. It’s not just brain rot for kids, or Glenn Beck in tears, it’s also reporting like this weekend’s upcoming CNN mini-documentary “Gary and Tony Have a Baby.” Don’t just take it from me—I’m clearly biased and homo-friendly. Take it (like a man) from Tom Shales over at the Washington Post, who points out that the one-hour special (Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m.) is neither mawkish nor didactic, but rather a straightahead look at forms of love and parenting that a lot of people still want to deny. Watch it.