When the David Beckham underwear ad for clothing retailer H&M came on during the Super Bowl, CNN’s Roland Martin took to Twitter to comment on it. Now, Martin is under fire from gay rights group GLAAD.

Here are Martin’s tweets:

Ain’t no real bruhs going to H&M to buy some damn David Beckham underwear! #superbowl

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) February 6, 2012

If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) February 6, 2012

A lot of people on Twitter responded negatively to the remark, including GLAAD. The gay rights group and Martin had this exchange:

@glaad @CNN well you’re clearly out of touch and clueless with what I tweeted. Way to assume, but you’re way off base.

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) February 6, 2012

Critics also point to a history of remarks including this piece he wrote on his website in 2006. In the post, he equates homosexuality to sinful behavior like stealing and infidelity and says his wife, a Baptist minister, “has counseled many men and women to walk away from the gay lifestyle.”

On Monday, Martin posted this on his Twitter feed:

Fam, let me address the issue that some in the LGBT community have raised regarding some of my Super Bowl tweets yesterday. I made several cracks about soccer as I do all the time. I was not referring to sexuality directly or indirectly regarding the David Beckham ad, and I’m sorry folks took it otherwise. It was meant to be a deliberately over the top and sarcastic crack about soccer; I do not advocate violence of any kind against anyone gay, or not. As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, anytime soccer comes up during football season it’s another chance for me to take a playful shot at soccer, nothing more.

Martin’s Twitter timeline is filled with protestations that he was just talking about soccer. Even if that’s the case, he implies football is a better sport because it’s manlier. And because it’s better and manly, it should beat up inferior and less manly sports – presumably, like soccer – and the people who like them. By saying a “real bruh” wouldn’t buy David Beckham’s underwear and by suggesting followers should “smack the ish [shit]” out of someone who likes the ad, he basically said my sport is better, manlier, and can kick the shit out of you and your sport.

That’s if you believe he was just talking about soccer, but I don’t think he was.

Yes, David Beckham is one of the most popular soccer players in the world, and the undoubtedly the most popular in the U.S. But he’s also one of the biggest celebrities in the world. And that ad had nothing to do with soccer. It was Becks showing his pecks and abs in tighty-whities. On a sexual level – really, the only level in the ad – the commercial wasn’t meant to appeal to straight guys, like the GoDaddy ads. The H&M Beckham ad was meant to appeal to women and gay men. And a commercial that would unabashedly sexualize a man, turning him into and object of desire and vulnerability in order to appeal to those two groups during the heterosexually testosterone-filled Super Bowl might make some men uncomfortable.

But maybe Martin didn’t see any of that. Maybe Martin saw past all quick shots of Beckham nearly naked body and only saw a soccer player.

Monday night, Martin apologized again saying that he is against bullying towards anyone including those in the LGBT community, he “sincerely regret[s] any offense my words have caused,” maintains that his remarks were just about soccer, but concedes, “I can certainly understand how someone could come to a different conclusion than the one I meant.”

He also said in his statement:

I’m disheartened that my words would embolden prejudice. While public debate over social issues is healthy, no matter which side someone takes, there is no room for debate as to whether we need to be respectful of others.

As someone who has spoken out forcefully against bigotry against African Americans and other minorities, as well as sexism against women, I fully understand how a group who has been unfairly treated would be offended by such comments, and, again, I am sorry for any offense my remarks caused.

So, what do you think? Are people making too much out of this, or did Martin reveal a bit of homophobia in his tweets? And if he did, should CNN fire him?

Connect with me on Twitter, follow my Tumblr and Like me on Facebook.

Volkswagen is going after men for the new version of the VW Beetle. The company found out the previous incarnation of the car had more female buyers than male ones. So, to make the new Beetle appeal to men, they say the car is “a boy.”

In the commercial for their low-calorie soda, the makers of Dr. Pepper Ten say it only has “ten manly calories” and the tag line is that “It’s not for women.”

Articles about the car and the soda point out that the conventional wisdom is that men won’t buy those products if they think the cars are for women or the drink doesn’t “seem macho enough.”

Maybe, but there must be a way to appeal to men without becoming that little boy who writes “no girls allowed” on his bedroom door. The Beetle ad is trying too hard: “This car isn’t girly,” implies the ad. Dr Pepper Ten tries to be so macho, I wonder if they considered infusing the drink with testosterone, too.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Old Spice Guy doesn’t do this. Commercials for the body wash are technically aimed at women, but they still need a macho stamp of approval for men to use it. And by appealing to both men and women, the Old Spice Guy ads don’t exclude anything feminine to prove how masculine it is.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photo credit: Jonathan Welsh/Wall Street Journal.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.

No, I’m not talking about Charlie Sheen.

The Heart Attack Grill is a restaurant in Phoenix that “glorifies obesity” according to founder, Jon Basso. The unhealthy menu includes a Quadruple Bypass Burger stacked with two pounds of beef and Flatliner Fries cooked in “pure lard.” They also serve “full sugar” Coca-Cola and no-filter cigarettes. If you weigh over 350 pounds, you eat for free.

Check out one of their ads:

“Mild death may occur,” might sound funny in the commercial. Sadly, though, death did occur. The man eating the burger in that ad was Blair River. The 6-foot-8, 575-pound River died last week at the age of 29. His friends think it was complications from pneumonia, but it’s hard not to wonder if obesity contributed to poor health that, in turn, led to his death.

River’s death is reminiscent of the two Marlboro Men, David McLean and Wayne McLaren, who died of lung cancer in the 1990s. In both the Marlboro ads and possibly the Heart Attack Grill ads, these men were paid to promote unhealthy activities, then died as a result of those activities. Both cases are incredibly ironic. By joking about death, the Heart Attack Grill ad is beyond ironic and just brutal.

So, did River’s death cause Basso to make any changes at the Heart Attack Grill?

From the Arizona Republic:

[Basso] said the people at Heart Attack Grill would pay tribute to their friend by honoring his memory, not by changing the menu.

“We’re going to do what we have been doing,” Basso said. “That’s talking about him in a positive way and letting everyone know what a great person he was.”

It’s nice to remember a friend, but the restaurant promotes obesity – a problem that is getting worse in America. The Heart Attack Grill still has the ad with Blair on their homepage that jokes their diet might cause “mild death” among other health ailments. And the restaurant continues to weigh people in to see if being overweight allows them to eat unhealthy amounts of unhealthy food for free.

Unapologetically promoting and profiting from obesity is in bad taste. Continuing that business after a friend and spokesperson may have died from that condition is sickening.

Follow me on Twitter and connect with me on Facebook.

The ad does two things. It puts race and the possibility of sex in the foreground. There’s the flirtatious steal of the hat and the kiss that gives the guy braces. The commercial also shows race as flexible when the two DJs partially switch skin colors.

It’s said Millenials aren’t as concerned about race as previous generations are. The folks at DJ Hero 2 are probably betting on this. I think they’re a little heavy-handed, though, in putting together the ideas of DJ-mixing and race-mixing. While that analogy might sound offensive, I don’t think the ad comes of that way. In the end, it’s a fun commercial that shows people of different races partying and having fun in ways not often seen in advertisements.

Check it out.

Ever lied to get laid? You could do time for it in Israel. An Arab man told a woman he was didn’t tell a woman he’s not Jewish, and she had consensual sex with him. The truth came out, and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail for “rape by deception.” [The Daily Beast via Haaretz]

“Three penises are worth one womb.” Disposable Males. [All Men Are Liars]

A team of scientists examined differences in athletic ability among blacks and whites through evolution and heredity, not through race. [Slate]

Kotex is coming out with a new tampon line called U by Kotex. The original ad for the campaign used the word “vagina.” It turns out, using the proper word for female genitalia in a commercial was too much for three broadcast networks. So, they rejected it. Kotex came up with another version of the ad that replaced the v-word with “down there.” That was still over the line for two of those networks because they rejected the revised spot, too. (The networks involved weren’t disclosed.)

It’s bad enough that these corporations rejected the vagina version. It’s not like it’s inappropriate. The ad is for a tampon! But “down there” didn’t make it either? It’s vague, playful without being dirty, and relevant when talking about stuff that happens Down There. (Maybe they should’ve used vajayjay.)

So, after two strikes, here’s the sanitized version Kotex came up with:

Melanie Harris from JWT who made the ad is quoted in the New York Times saying:

It’s very funny because the whole spot is about censorship…The whole category [of commercials] has been very euphemistic, or paternalistic even, and we’re saying, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tampon is not a dirty word, and neither is vagina.

Elissa Stein, co-author of “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation” was also quoted in the article.

Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is…You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful — it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.

You’d think we’d have come farther than this, not just in tampon advertising, but talking about sex in general. Since the national freak-out over the Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction a few years ago, though, the broadcast networks have been very worried about about offending the public. They’re afraid to treat us like adults, which is ironic because these products are for adults. If you’re buying tampons, let’s hope it’s not the first time you’ve heard of a vagina.

It’s as if just because sex happens Down There, body parts used during sex can’t be mentioned in a network commercial. If we can’t talk like adults about periods and tampons, how are we supposed to talk openly and honestly about other sex issues like teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases?

What do you think? Is it silly for the networks to reject the versions with “vagina” and “down there” in them? Were they being sensitive to the public or fearful of it?

The life of these guys are so miserable because they have to spend time with their mothers-in-law and take their wives’ calls? What assholes. These guys are whining about how whipped they feel because they have to watch “vampire shows?” Having to do those things doesn’t break down the American man. Feeling that those things do break it down is being whiny. It’s the opposite of the manly-man they’re trying to be.

I never understood the whole “life is over because I’m married” line of thinking. First, the reasons “life is so bad” always seemed lame, like in this commercial. And second, no one forced these guys to get married in the first place. So, conclusion: Stupid commercial.

A few weeks later, I noticed an ad for Dockers khakis that said “Wear the Pants.” I saw it and others for the same campaign in a few places in Midtown, but didn’t initially pay too much attention to them. Then I thought about “Wearing the pants” in light of the Dodge ad. It turns out the Dockers campaign is telling men to “wear the pants” to bring back manhood. Wearing khakis is going to bring macho back?

Really?

Here’s the full ad (via NYDailyNews.com)

This ad really pissed me off.

“Once upon a time,” the ad begins, “men wore the pants and wore them well.” Later, the ad continues, “Men took charge because that’s what they did.” No, men took charge because women weren’t allowed to. Men wore the pants, remember? “The world decided it no longer needed men,” claims the ad. (It did?) We were “stripped” of our khakis (read: manhood, balls) and “left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny.” How? ”Disco by disco, latte by non-fat latte.”And while the ad claims, “The World sits idly by as cities crumble,” it seems to blames cities for the emasculation of the American man.

Disco was popular in cities with blacks and gays. The whole “Disco Sucks” movement and the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 are regarded as having racist and homophobic undertones: White, working class, rock music pushing back against black, Latino, gay urban disco. So, saying disco is a reason that men lost their mojo is ignorant at best. At worst, it’s offensive.

As a New Yorker, I find the anti-urban sentiment offensive. What offends me most about this ad, though, is that it yearns back to the time when women, gays and people of color were second class citizens. This ad sets itself up as harkening back to the 1950′s before the Women’s Lib movement. I really like “Mad Men,” but as a black man I wouldn’t want to be in it. As far as gender and racial relationships, it’s offensive to wish for that period in American history to return.

This manifesto isn’t on the Dockers site anymore. The two articles I’ve seen about the campaign link to the Dockers site, but the manifesto is no where to be found. As of just a few days ago, it’s still part of a huge poster in Midtown Manhattan. Whether or not it’s soon taken down, a bunch of people who are paid a lot of money thought this campaign was a good idea. They claim it was tested with women, “It’s not about men taking over again,” and it’s not about whether men are “gay, straight, whatever.” That doesn’t seem possible. It’s amazing that people who use cultural phrases or images don’t understand their meaning or why they’re offensive.

It’s worth noting that the two ads came out in a few months of each other. Dockers in December and Dodge in February. Both state that American masculinity is being threatened. Yes, there’s the “mancession,” more women graduating college than men, and boys not learning as well as girls in elementary schools. All are important issues for society as a whole, not just men. But Dockers and Dodge aren’t talking about those things. They’re talking about men being emasculated and dominated by women. The implication is that men are under siege, mostly by women. Guys, they say, need to man-up and once again wear the pants. (Dockers literally says this.)

The norms of what it means to be a guy in this country are changing. Masculinity is entering unchartered territory. More and more, men are equal partners with women at home and work. Sometimes, the man may be the one who stays home. All of that is ok.Real men know how to handle change. There’s no need to “wear the pants.” We don’t need to bring that type of macho back.

The controversy over what ads CBS has decided to show and what they rejected is important, though. Those decisions over what an expected 90 million people will see says a lot about CBS’s and the NFL’s points of view. It also says a lot about what they think the 90 million viewers want to see.

The network rejected ads from ManCrunch, a gay dating website, and the web domain and hosting firm GoDaddy, whose ads have been rejected from previous Super Bowl broadcasts. CBS has agreed, though, to air a pro-life ad from conservative group Focus on the Family featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. There have been sexy ads that have aired during previous Super Bowls, including some from GoDaddy, and there will surely be some this year. There’s very little flesh in either the ManCrunch or GoDaddy ads, though. This seems to be more about sexuality than straight-up sex.

In the ManCrunch ad, two guy’s guys are on a couch watching a football game. Their hands touch over a bowl of potato chips, they share a glance and then they start making out. It’s nothing racier than something you might see on a late night sketch comedy (and apparently it’s already been done there). Here’s the ad:

In the GoDaddy ad, you have a gruff looking footballer who retires, comes out of the closet after leaving football, is flamboyantly gay, and starts a lingerie line using GoDaddy’s services:

See a pattern?

Two NFL-lovers who, while watching the game, realize they themselves want to be lovers. In the other ad, an ex-football player leaves the game and comes out of the closet.

Dan Neil says in the Los Angeles Times that there could be something going on here.

The subtext in both [commercials] is that football itself is, well, kind of gay.

…American football strikes me as a pretty homoerotic spectacle, beginning with the hypertrophic masculinity of the male form in tight pants and huge shoulder pads and ending with the most undignified gesture in all of sports, the hands-between-the-cheeks snap of the ball. Hike, indeed…The pats on the fanny, the showering together, the endlessly rolling around in the dirt. All things considered, I think figure skating is more butch…If I were one of football’s guardians, I might be a little touchy about it. Perhaps that is at the root of the ads’ dismissal.

Maybe. If Neil’s supposition is correct and the subtext (intentional or not) of both commercials is that football is “kind of gay,” no one had to make a big deal about it. CBS or the NFL could’ve just shrugged, laughed it off, or ignored it, but still aired the ad. Instead, CBS pulled it. So, was someone worried about the NFL being offended? Did someone worry about viewers being offended? CBS puts out generic statements when ads are rejected which read something something like the ad is “not within the broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday.” So, we don’t know.

Let’s get to the pro-life ad. It hasn’t been released yet, but it reportedly has Tebow’s mother talking about when she was sick while pregnant in the Philippines. She was told she should terminate the pregnancy, but she decided to keep the baby. Tim was born and grew-up to be a Heisman Trophy winner. The ad reportedly ends with “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

Is that going to play with a Super Bowl audience? How’s it going to fit with the violent – um, action movie trailers, sports cars and buxom women selling beer? Will the ad fit in with the game itself that has 250-300lb men slamming into each other at top speed?

It’s one of the strange things about America. Violence, on some level, is ok. Most sex, is not. On it’s face, it seems antithetical that a violent, macho game would have an ad that’s supposed to “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The powers that be – not just those at CBS and the NFL, but also those in Washington – think the Super Bowl is an event that every American family should be able to enjoy. Remember how everyone flipped-out over the Jackson/Timberlake Wardrobe Malfunction in 2004?

Celebrate Football. Celebrate Family.

When 90 million people are watching, celebrating anything other than violence, in movies or on the field, or heterosexual sex, within marriage for the sole purpose of making babies, is unacceptable.

Neil also says in his piece, “The [ManCrunch] ad’s real transgression is to imply that football-loving straight men, the sort who high-five after touchdowns, might under the right circumstances act out sexually with another man.” Someone saying that gay sex is possible by the very men who are watching the Super Bowl is out of the question. Making that implication to almost 1/3 of the American population would be pretty ballsy.

This whole thing reminds me of something Bill Maher said a few years ago about how Americans who are homophobic really don’t have an issue with lesbian sex. They have a problem with gay male sex. “In America, when a man puts something in another man, it had better be a bullet.”

Violence is ok for family time. Straight sex is ok, too. Sex between two men is a no-no.

What do you think?

Are CBS and/or the NFL too conservative? Are they being anti-gay?

Is CBS being careful because of the Jackson/Timberlake Wardrobe Malfunction?

Does CBS have to be ideologically fair or neutral when choosing the ads that run on it’s air?

Leave a comment below.

UPDATE: I saw the Tebow/Focus On The Family commercial. With the exception of the “Celebrate Life” tagline at the end, it wasn’t overtly pro-life. I’m not sure what the controversy was for. It would have been easy to release the ad before the game to show how benign it was. It makes me wonder if the ad wasn’t revealed so it could be hyped. By doing that, everyone would be talking about the abortion issue and the ad itself. And since so many people know about the controversy, there wouldn’t be a need to say anything explicitly pro-life. It’s implied. Or did the controversy make CBS decide to have Focus On The Family pull back on the more blatantly pro-life rhetoric?

Thoughts?