If Jesse Watters was AI, he’d be called ChatXY.
The system would lack science on the male chromosome. It would just be a shibboleth about all the things real men should never do. Blowing on hot soup? Unmanly. Saying sorry? Grow a pair. Drinking a milkshake with a straw? Pansy. Hugging? Don’t make me punch you. Licking an ice cream cone in public? Why don’t you just wear ballet slippers in your candlelit bubble bath while nursing a Cosmo and listening to Taylor Swift?
The Fox News host declared a no-no for the bro-bros on Wednesday.
“It’s Joe Biden’s birthday,” said Watters, looking like a guy who is more comfortable with a feather duster than a chainsaw. “The Big 82 for the Big Guy. And ‘Primetime’ would wish him a happy birthday, but we have rules here. Men don’t wish men happy birthdays.”
Now, if he had taken a brave stand against remembering wedding anniversaries, I’d back him up. But a jeremiad against “happy birthday” is grasping at milkshake straws. What’s next? Real men drive with their knees? Real men do not perch in a preshow chair covered in an apron as their faces are caked with high-def makeup? No, wait, he can’t push that one.
Assuming this real man stuff is not just trolling, it’s hard not to feel sorry for his wife. She wakes up and says, “Good morning.” Jesse scoffs and says sunrise salutations are for sissies, as is alliteration. She says, “I love you.” He challenges her to an arm-wrestling contest.
She sees a spider. He shrieks and jumps atop the kitchen island.
Watters once said, “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” On another occasion, he said this: “No, I like blankets. But then Tom said it’s not manly to have a blanket, so now I’m going to say I just sleep on a sheet.”
Not sure who Tom is. But I’m guessing he hunts elk and grills on charcoal.
Watters is fixated on grafting his personal gripes onto a sociological map in which liberal orthodoxy is always to blame. Why can’t real men still smoke cigars in the waiting room when their wives are giving birth? Why are we now inside the delivery room, holding hands and serving as breathing coaches? Why can’t real men drink and drive or pinch the bums of female colleagues?
Ladies, calm down, it’s a bum compliment!
We all have personal gripes that have nothing to do with the world at large. For example, I have written rotten things about cauliflower, which I have accurately described as a “revolting plant that resembles a cluster of shrunken brains soaked in Clorox.”
But at no point have I claimed cauliflower is foisted upon me by the woke.
How did we end up with so many Jesse Watters in the culture? I’m not blaming feminism. But Donald Trump’s election triumph was due in part to the “bro vote” and a backlash against the group smear of “toxic masculinity.” If feminism was “Star Wars,” we are deep inside the sequel: “The Manosphere Strikes Back.”
Watters, like his colleague Greg Gutfeld, offers asinine absurdities with a smirk. But most of his male fans do not have a sonar calibrated to detect irony or satire. So if Watters says real men do not participate in Secret Santa, the dudes will shun the under-$20 gift guide on Amazon. If he rails against co-mingling at a Buck & Doe party, the young bucks will tell their does they ain’t going.
Watters gets ratings by exploiting the gender wars he claims to abhor.
He earns his keep at Fox as a force-multiplier for division.
Jesse Watters? I don’t want to make this too personal. But would a real man inflict misery and divorce on his first wife and mother of his twin daughters by having an affair with a 25-year-old staffer on his show? Would a real man with now three daughters from two wives say the generals “would have their way” with a president Kamala Harris, knowing full well such language is torqued with dark sexual predation? Does a real man mock the homeless or Asian Americans for cheap laughs? Does a real man have “Bailey” as a middle name?
Seriously, change it to Thor to boost the made-for-TV illusion.
And ease up on the mousse.
A real man is, first and foremost, a great human. A real man listens. A real man has empathy. A real man has inner strength. A real man has moral clarity. A real man sacrifices. A real man helps others. A real man thinks. A real man comforts. A real man doesn’t spend one nanosecond whinging about hot soup or ice cream cones because a real man has purpose and priorities.
One day maybe Jesse Watters will become a real man.
