For as long as I can remember, marketers have been using misogyny to sell products, get votes and attract viewers.

It’s sort of astonishing… in my lifetime, we’ve seen the end of public (but certainly not private) attacks on people because of race or mainstream religion (fringe beliefs and sexual orientation are still fair game, apparently)… but trying to humiliate half the population because of their gender seems just fine.

That may be changing. There’s a significant backlash about John McCain’s handling of a question earlier in the week. If the questioner had used a similar epithet about a black person or someone from Poland, they would have been shown the door. At least I hope so.

And now Robert Greenwald has put together a really disturbing (NSFW) video of misogyny and pornography as broadcast on Fox News.

As Hugh Hefner demonstrated with Playboy fifty years ago, objectifying women was a shortcut to cash. And all you have to do is visit Las Vegas to see it happening in every hallway, on every billboard. What is now becoming clear is that many of the people in your market won’t stand for it any longer. One more shortcut, gone.