Yesterday, commenter Rocco posted a link to a Washington Post article that expressed a good deal of disgust over the “post-feminist” fare that is filling up this season’s TV Lineups. Written by Hampton Stevens and titled “Fall TV’s mean women, milquetoast men,” the article takes aim at a number of new shows that portray men as a bunch of ineffectual wimps and women as, well, “jerks:”

If the fall TV season is any guide, the sexual revolution that was supposed to liberate men and women from traditional sex roles seems to have resulted instead in a straight-up role reversal. The male characters are messes — insecure, jobless, barely able to dress themselves without a wife or girlfriend and/or living in mom’s proverbial basement. Their female counterparts, meanwhile, are flaunting the same selfish, boorish ways that once got men called “chauvinist pigs.” The only difference today is that when these female characters act like jerks, we are expected to cheer them on as “empowered.”

Heroines on TV are portrayed as tough, pitiless bitches who think nothing of being abusive and demeaning toward those less powerful than them. They are even meaner than male heroes from the bad old days, who at least wouldn’t stoop to bullying the stupid and weak. Today, anyone who is pathetic in any way – almost always a man – is a fair target. And, according to the author, the men on the small screen are really pathetic:

As many critics have noted, 2011 is the season of emasculation with a bevy of new shows about the purportedly dire state of American manhood. For example, “Man Up” (which premiered Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC) features a Judd Apatow-ish bunch of latte-sipping best friends in their 40s who go on a quest for their inner “Iron Johns.”

Perhaps TV here is a reflection of society at large. Women have a higher employment rate, more money, and are better educated. And, as many of us know all too well, they can be really, really mean. Nothing new here.

However, what is new and different is the fact that a man is actually expressing some disgust with this state of affairs in a mainstream media outlet. And Mr. Stevens pulls no punches:

Unlike their broke, wimpy male counterparts, the women on these shows are mostly strong and self-sufficient, and critics describe them with glowing words such as “assertive,” “edgy” and, heaven help us, “sassy.” However, what these women actually are, generally speaking, are utterly awful human beings. They may be inspired by “Sex and the City’s” Carrie Bradshaw, but they act like Samantha, openly bragging about how badly they treat men. They make the sorts of crude jokes that are rightly decried when men make them on prime-time network TV, yet are celebrated for women as signs of emancipation.

Awful human beings indeed…

George Orwell wrote that power corrupts, and our women, empowered as they are today, have become thoroughly rotten. When a movement starts to lose steam, the first thing to fall of is its moral standing. Just a few years ago, women could still count on near-unanimous support in bashing men, but that’s starting to change. Today, too many of them have just turned out to be too awful, and finally it’s too obvious to ignore.