Showing posts with label stephen fowler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stephen fowler. Show all posts
Sunday, February 08, 2009
My review was picked up by Gawker
Woo-hoo! Gawker picked up my Reality Roll Call guest blog review of the Fowler-Long Wife Swap episode. I'm Internet-famous, for prolly 5 or 10 minutes! Yay! (And thanks again to Reality Roll Call Editor Faith W!)
Sunday, February 01, 2009
More Wife Swap reaction: Americans are great
Well it's been two days and the nation is still outraged at the behavior of Stephen Fowler from Friday night's airing if Wife Swap.
I believe he could be the most hated man in the country at this moment. His 15 minutes of fame is certainly not what he had envisioned, despite his purported 158 IQ and near perfect GRE scores. He missed the boat completely on that one.
To review: Families with diverse opinions and backgrounds are paired up and the wives of each family live with the new family for two weeks. The first week, the wives participate fully and scrupulously in the new family's routine, and the second week, they make new rules for the family to live by based on ideas for ways the family could improve. The families do so and at the end the come together and share what they have learned. So far so good.
Usually the husbands who stay behind are challenged and resist the new rules. Some resist loudly and bombastically and others just resist calmly. Some don't resist but gamely try the new ways and ideas. It usually ends up that each family learns something despite their philosophical or socio-economic differences.
Not so this week.
Stephen Fowler treated swapped wife Gayla Long with excoriation, humiliating her at every turn, and was gleefully cruel. His statements were reprehensible and if there are redeeming qualities to this man they were well hidden from view during the hour long reality show.
But that is not my point, I already vented about this earlier. I have two points now.
The first is that Americans from coast to coast are furious. Furious at the slams against our military and our heartland. Furious that ABC allowed needless cruelty to be showcased. Furious that a father such as this is "raising" two precious children. Furious about his statements regarding citizenship and civic duty. As well we should be furious, and Americans are not holding back. I'm hopeful because of the appropriate and immediate reaction of the American public to this kind o behavior. I am glad we are defending a moral line and taking Mr Fowler to task.
Secondly, most liberals are always amazed and shocked when there is a reaction to their egregious behavior. They feel they can say and do whatever they want, but in a vacuum. They tout free speech but claim no responsibility for their hurtful words. They claim freedom of the press but cry foul when someone else uses the same to point out the error of their ways.
Strong negative reactions to their strong negative words and actions always surprises them. It is then I have noticed they throw tantrums and threaten to sue. Or, deride the appropriate and just reactions as "anti-intellectual" or mob mentality. Always, they are surprised that they reap what they sow.
But that is the way of the world. You reap what you sow. Thanks, America, for being so smart and joining the public outcry with such a sane response.
PS: I was invited to be a guest blogger at the Reality Roll Call television review blog, thank you Faith!
I believe he could be the most hated man in the country at this moment. His 15 minutes of fame is certainly not what he had envisioned, despite his purported 158 IQ and near perfect GRE scores. He missed the boat completely on that one.
To review: Families with diverse opinions and backgrounds are paired up and the wives of each family live with the new family for two weeks. The first week, the wives participate fully and scrupulously in the new family's routine, and the second week, they make new rules for the family to live by based on ideas for ways the family could improve. The families do so and at the end the come together and share what they have learned. So far so good.
Usually the husbands who stay behind are challenged and resist the new rules. Some resist loudly and bombastically and others just resist calmly. Some don't resist but gamely try the new ways and ideas. It usually ends up that each family learns something despite their philosophical or socio-economic differences.
Not so this week.
Stephen Fowler treated swapped wife Gayla Long with excoriation, humiliating her at every turn, and was gleefully cruel. His statements were reprehensible and if there are redeeming qualities to this man they were well hidden from view during the hour long reality show.
But that is not my point, I already vented about this earlier. I have two points now.
The first is that Americans from coast to coast are furious. Furious at the slams against our military and our heartland. Furious that ABC allowed needless cruelty to be showcased. Furious that a father such as this is "raising" two precious children. Furious about his statements regarding citizenship and civic duty. As well we should be furious, and Americans are not holding back. I'm hopeful because of the appropriate and immediate reaction of the American public to this kind o behavior. I am glad we are defending a moral line and taking Mr Fowler to task.
Secondly, most liberals are always amazed and shocked when there is a reaction to their egregious behavior. They feel they can say and do whatever they want, but in a vacuum. They tout free speech but claim no responsibility for their hurtful words. They claim freedom of the press but cry foul when someone else uses the same to point out the error of their ways.
Strong negative reactions to their strong negative words and actions always surprises them. It is then I have noticed they throw tantrums and threaten to sue. Or, deride the appropriate and just reactions as "anti-intellectual" or mob mentality. Always, they are surprised that they reap what they sow.
But that is the way of the world. You reap what you sow. Thanks, America, for being so smart and joining the public outcry with such a sane response.
PS: I was invited to be a guest blogger at the Reality Roll Call television review blog, thank you Faith!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Wife Swap Long-Fowler family
Oh, boy is the 'net howling today after that disastrous pairing of Stephen Fowler and Gayla Long in ABC's Wife Swap. Stephen Fowler's insistence that his education, accent, and standing in the world gives him license to demean and abuse the woman from Missouri was shameful. I believe it was unnecessary for ABC to continue with that pairing, since he refused to participate in the Rules, and reneged on his obligations to participate fully in the show. He kicked Gayla out and she wound up in a hotel room, for heavens' sakes. What does it take for ABC to decide to end something? They canceled Boston Legal quick enough. But they didn't release Gayla Long from her abuse inside that house of horrors with Stephen Fowler. What a long and lonely night in the hotel room that must have been for her.
Mr Fowler had called her names, insulted her for the fun of it, (and in the so doing insulted all his wife's clients), taught his kids to do the same which to me, is child abuse, and refused to participate in the obligations of the show on the basis that he was above her and her ideas were beneath him.
That is not how we treat people. That is not how we fulfill our business obligations. Why ABC continued subjecting Gayla to the classless boor is beyond me.
Now. Taking a breath. My family was blessed enough to have money and emphasized education, world views and culture to the same extent that Stephen Fowler did. However, they also taught me to be thankful for the material comfort we had, to listen to other points of view, and never ever think myself above another person. Certainly they set the example that you are courteous to all people in public and treat them respectfully. I do not know why or how Mr Fowler ended up so heartless, but to showcase that level of meanness on a national television show was just too crass for words, especially since Mrs. Long was such a classy person and stayed true to Christian values in the face of hard, deep, and constant abuse on national television no less.
ABC: do not let your show participants be abused for the sake of ratings. I enjoy Wife Swap for the sake of seeing how others cope when living outside their element and seeing what they could and do learn, but abuse should never be part of the mix.
So that is my rant. This is another person's rant and they said it much better than I could:
Mr Fowler had called her names, insulted her for the fun of it, (and in the so doing insulted all his wife's clients), taught his kids to do the same which to me, is child abuse, and refused to participate in the obligations of the show on the basis that he was above her and her ideas were beneath him.
That is not how we treat people. That is not how we fulfill our business obligations. Why ABC continued subjecting Gayla to the classless boor is beyond me.
Now. Taking a breath. My family was blessed enough to have money and emphasized education, world views and culture to the same extent that Stephen Fowler did. However, they also taught me to be thankful for the material comfort we had, to listen to other points of view, and never ever think myself above another person. Certainly they set the example that you are courteous to all people in public and treat them respectfully. I do not know why or how Mr Fowler ended up so heartless, but to showcase that level of meanness on a national television show was just too crass for words, especially since Mrs. Long was such a classy person and stayed true to Christian values in the face of hard, deep, and constant abuse on national television no less.
ABC: do not let your show participants be abused for the sake of ratings. I enjoy Wife Swap for the sake of seeing how others cope when living outside their element and seeing what they could and do learn, but abuse should never be part of the mix.
So that is my rant. This is another person's rant and they said it much better than I could:
Wow. At present, I am two-thirds of the way into this evening's episode of Wife Swap. I am so aghast at the actions of Steven Fowler that I had to write in. I actually took the time to grab my laptop, power it up and sign up for an account on ABC.com, merely in hopes of Mr. Fowler reading this message. So Mr. Fowler- You should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. Before you label me with one of your stereotypes and dismiss me as some wannabe Internet opinionist, let me give you my background. I was educated at Le Rosey through my A -levels, did my undergrad at Harvard and my post-grad at Columbia.
While I am proud of my education, it does not define who I am, nor do I deem it as a measure of my self-worth, in any way. Education is a wonderful thing and the fact that you place such emphasis on it is admirable. The fact that you use it to judge others and to assume some kind of superiority over them is pathetic. As an educated person I would hope that you would be beyond acting in such a callous and classless manner - this is clearly not the case. You were immensely rude and obnoxious to the other family and should be ashamed of yourself. Absolutely ashamed.
What's even more pathetic is how you continually spewed academic euphemism, sesquipedalianism or some polysyllabic bit of arcane jargon just to make the wife from the other family feel beneath you (see how it comes off?). With the grace of god and a bit of luck, I have been extremely successful and I would never, ever try to intentionally make someone feel like they are beneath me. That is sadistic and beyond reprehensible. I don't judge people to begin with; I do, however, look to their heart and actions in drawing my conclusions about them - not their education (or lack of it) or wallet. I learn from different people EVERY DAY - rich, poor, educated or not. I just try to be a good human being.
The priorities you preach to be important (education, environmentalism, etc.) are indeed so; however these are all tools for self-improvement. It seems you would rather use them in the context of measuring your own self-worth or more disgustingly the lack of worth in others. I usually attribute some of the characterizations I see on reality shows to editing, but not in your case. You just came off as an incredibly small-minded, petulant, narcissistic jerk. I hope you watch yourself on camera and are able to learn from it. Class is an intrinsic quality; it is not mutually exclusive to wealth or education. You, sir, proved that this evening. I hope, for the sake of your children, that you grow from this experience.
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