Stupid Hyundai.

Lise Meitner

Bess Truman

Hedy Lamarr

Margaret Thatcher (pure evil, sure, but SMART pure evil)

Sally Ride

Bonnie Dunbar

Susan Faludi

Sandra Day O'Connor

Jane Goodall

Zsuzsa "Susan" Polgar

Rosalyn S. Yalow

Linda B. Buck

Katharine Graham

Toni Morrison

Margaret Meade

(If you don't know who some of these women are - you should - look 'em up).

Did you really leap from "showed pictures of guys" to "Hyundai thinks women are stupid"?

Is there a firesale on outrage over there?

Jesus, here I am celebrating the Massachusetts decision not to rip away marriage from people, and I totally didn't realize I should have been offended that a car commercial didn't reflect gender diversity.

That's how shitty our public school system is.

Gay men are maybe 2.5% of the population compared to over 50% of the population who are women. Gay boys aren't given Barbies to play with instead of science kits. There isn't a widespread belief that gay men aren't smart or capable of being in government, business, or science.

Not only that, gay white men tend to look just like heterosexual white men.

but what a stoopid commercial. and sexist. it completely reinforces the idea that of all the smart people, most of them are white males. if you can't see that you are part of the problem.

and i'm fairly certain frasier would never drive a hyundai.

Just curious if anyone else saw that.

If Professor Hinkley was so damned smart, how come he could never get them off the island?

I found that commercial way more insulting than this, for a variety of reasons that I would hope are obvious.

Lets compare it to ads that really do claim one sex is smarter than the other…

How about the Domino's Pizza ad called "Home Improvement." In the spot, a woman in a home improvement store rings one of the many doorbell displays which cause men throughout the store to come running like salivating dogs believing it's the Domino's delivery guy at the door.

Or how about the myriad of ads that claim Daddy can't cook. Daddy can't clean. Daddy can't discipline the child. Daddy can't control himself in Circuit City. Daddy runs in circles holding a baby at arm's length. He has absolutely no idea what it is or why it makes that noise. Daddy takes the kids to McDonalds because Mom's not Home.

Burping, farting, ignorant, and virtually useless; that's how the average man is depicted nowadays.

In matters of pop culture, guys are never depicted in a glamorous fashion. In most TV ads men are controlled by either their cars, their hormones, their need for a brewski, or their appetites or all of the above.

And you get all bent out of shape when “smart” (though largely unrecognizable) women are excluded from an ad designed to sell cars to men. That’s like complaining when men with nice legs are excluded from pantyhose commercials.

Give me a break and get over it.

Same goes for women - if the target audience is guys you show women noticing the car, but they don't get to drive it.

But both gay guys and women can be in the car with you, so long as the white guy drives.

Man, this is SOOOOOOO 70s. Talk about stupid ...

Or we can just admit that advertising is pretty always stupid and ignore it.

Getting angry at commercials for directing their ads at some demographic to which you don't belong (this ad is apparently directed at white male Democrats, since the featured "smart" politicians are FDR and JFK) is like getting mad at pickpockets for not targeting you.

this commercial, however, both perpetuates a wrong and harmful stereotype (that the smarts are men), and is designed to appeal based on that stereotype. people were sitting in a room and either purposefully omitted women, or didn't come up with any.

But to be fair, they didn't name anyone in the ad. It relies entirely on the audience recognizing the person in a 2 second clip of video. They need extremely famous faces, not just any old smart person. Einstein is undoubtedly the most widely recognized face of a smart person in this country; and the fact that he happens to be a white guy is irrelevant.

Megan, the only woman you listed who would be immediately recognizable by a large segment of the population would be Oprah. I'd recognize the names of the rest of them, but not their image in 2 seconds of out-of-context video.

Comte, your list is even worse. The only one I'd recognize immediately by an unnamed face alone would be Margaret Thatcher.

So all you angry people out there, see if you can come up with a list of smart women that the general public would actually recognize immediately in a 2 second video clip.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/testdrives/Reviews/hyundai-sonata-2006.html

I don't know if this commercial was intentional, but it certainly was ignorant. It looks as white as some newspapers around here. At least there was a smart African-American man for a split second. No Americans shown of Asian or Native American descent, no Hispanics.

With a Republican narrator, Hyundai probably has their target demographic figured out and is simply catering towards that.

Does she say everything that pops into her head or only the stupid things?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Megan's hissy fit is completely imbecilic. Maybe it would work on Pandagon, but it doesn't really work here.

It’s demeaning to women to portray men as incompetent in stereotypically female roles.

–and-

It’s demeaning to women to portray women as incompetent in stereotypically male roles.

Wow.

I’m gobsmacked.

not only that, but the commercials about men are usually attempts at humor, while this hyundia commercial most certainly is not.

i just re-read this. wha?!?!

men don't wear pantyhose. women do buy cars. more importantly, woman can be smart. even if you are selling to men smart women can be used to demonstrate this point otherwise it reinforcing the idea that only men are smart.

and clearly that isn't the case, YGBKM.