As the post-Counterculture years went by, what began as a commendable openness to the rights and dignity of more kinds of people began to mutate into less positive forms.

The beginnings of a shift were noticeable when what was originally called "Women’s Liberation" came to be more narrowly defined as "feminism," with me-vs.-you implications that had not been there before.

This and a concurrent increase in acceptance of “non-traditional masculinity,” which included more tolerance and respect for gays, ultimately morphed into a form of misandrist (i.e., anti-male) sentiment whose scope, particularly in the media, has yet to be fully acknowledged.

Today, it is virtually impossible to turn on your television set without seeing men depicted as childish, clueless, self-centered oafs.  In fact, this has become the norm for portraying adult males.   The more manly a guy is, the more likely he is to be depicted  in this manner.

This is the sort of portrayal that feminists would be up in arms about, if it involved women.  African-Americans would likewise howl in protest about a contemporary remake of Amos ‘n Andy, if their blackness were to be depicted in a comparable manner today.

Oddly, though, as long as they’re ridiculed in the same manner as their white counterparts, black men don't seem to have found much of a problem with these depictions.