Well, I’m with you on how wonderful Alan Alda is, Zoe, but just because Alan was (is) all kinds of awesome, sexy, funny, smart, warm-hearted, talented, forward-thinking and so on, doesn’t mean old-fashioned women and insecure chauvinists didn’t call him a wimp. Sticking up for women and being ‘sensitive’ certainly made him the butt of many derisive jokes, more’s the pity. Ditto Phil Donahue.
I blame Marlo Thomas. Clearly she’s the connection that poisons the well! (Alda took part in “Free to Be You and Me” with Thomas, and of course Phil’s married to her.)
Yes, they were considered wimpy by a certain segment of society. What I’m challenging is the idea that that segment represents society as a whole. Or do cavemen (and women) just have louder voices that the rest of us?
That’s pointless. Nothing represents society as a whole, beyond some uselessly generalized statements like “all citizens are human” or “all citizens breathe oxygen”. What you’re describing is a tactic to ignore an opinion that disagrees with your own because only some fraction of society holds it.