The Year of the Ass: Stephen Fowler
Photo: Orin_Opiglot on Flickr
Tonight’s episode of Wife Swap leads me to believe the Chinese New Year the world just celebrated rung in the Year of the Ass.
Now, I rarely watch TV. When I do, though, I like to watch trashy shows. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I watch American Idol auditions and family-based reality garbage like Nanny 911 (is that even still on?) and, yes, even Wife Swap.
Tonight’s Wife Swap ’star’, Mr. Stephen Fowler – CFO/VP Business Development at Sunlink Corporation – was likely San Francisco’s most obnoxious resident ever, and one of the rudest human beings I have ever seen in action.
Several pages of tweets confirmed I’m not alone here…
Here’s a quick background on his family:
Stephens-Fowler family from Northern California consider themselves “citizens of the world.” They strive for excellence in both mind and body. Life coach and certified weight-loss hypnotherapist Rene (43) and British-born environmental entrepreneur Stephen (49) raise their children, Juliette (11) and James (8), to be both health and environmentally conscious. With a diet of strictly organic food and weekends spent doing “family fitness activities,” the kids admit they can’t remember the last time they had a French fry. Domestics are taken care of by a housekeeper, as that is regarded as a necessity in the Stephens-Fowler set. In order to ensure acceptance to an Ivy League school, they push their kids to excel in highbrow activities such as music, fencing and speaking foreign languages. Both children attend a bilingual school and have already visited over 12 countries. [thefutoncritic.com]
This guy may have an IQ of 158, but boy is he lacking in basic social graces. Some guy was so irate during the show he posted this listing on Craigslist:
Well, here you go dude… someone tracked down his home address.
I actually felt badly for his wife, Rene. It is quite obvious the only reason this family would participate in such a show was for her self-promotion. It’s a shame how it worked out, really, because she looks like she’s probably good at what she does. Too bad she is so influenced by someone so totally removed from reality. My heart was aching for her because even though she’s deluded herself into thinking that being overworked and overstressed is good for you as long as your body is healthy (even if her children are neglected), I could tell she was ashamed at what a jerk her husband was being at the table meeting at the end of the show. I can only imagine how mortified she was after seeing his absolutely inhumane treatment of the ’swapped wife’ during the show.
What I felt for them, however, paled in comparison to how heartbroken I was for the other woman. I’m sure the good does not outweigh the bad from this experience. No amount of money or compensation can make up for the treatment she received.
I hope that by watching the show he realizes what an ass he is. Maybe something good can come of it.
I doubt it though.
I also have a guilty love for Wife Swap. I didn’t see this particular episode, but I often find the casting somewhere between unfortunate and really grating. The producers are so clearly trying to create conflict, and regularly choosing families who seem to have lost touch with reality. Are we all really that lowbrow that it needs to end in a screaming fight every time?
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I think his high IQ stands for Idiot Quotient. He should go back to England where he belongs; he certainly won’t bring his company any business now that his arrogance is showing nationwide. Too bad he didn’t even realize what a jerk he actually is.
link to videos are at:
http://blog.stephenfowlersucks.com/2009/02/02/stephen-fowler-on-youtube.aspx
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I don’t know why everyone is in such an uproar. This is pretty typical boorish English behavior. They are all snobs.
MORON the most over educated MORON of the decade
Wow. I’m shocked people are still talking about this. I just checked out http://blog.stephenfowlersucks.com and can’t believe the amount of traffic it’s sending my way haha! That show was 2 weeks ago. Shows you my attention spand *blush*
Does anyone know if he has apologized yet? I know editing played a part in just how bad he looked on the show, but he sure gave them a lot of footy to choose from.
Now I agree with your option, but I didn’t appreciate the “Year of the Ass” comment.
how smart can you truly be if you cant run a washing machine it’s not a partical excelerator for Christ sake!
While I am the first to get irritated that so many folks have failed to get on-board with environmentally clean lifestyles, I need to see an internally clean life approach as well. Mr. Fowler as the MOST polluted “Soul” I have witnessed in a long time; maybe ever.
I will add this:
Mr. Fowler’s behaviors, mannerisms, heightened linguistic proclivity and deadened reactions manifest very much like my Aspergars’ Syndrome students; though I beg their forgiveness, as all of them are far kinder.
It is my sincere & professional sense that he is not JUST the “Asshole” that many of you are calling him; I suspect there may be huge synaptic gulfs in his mental processing. That level of obsessiveness, redundancy & insensitivity are hallmarks of the syndrome. If so, he can’t be blamed for some of his approach, as it’s psychobiological. If his wife is in fact demanding he get treatment, and if the practitioner has a shred of ability, s/he will be able to identify the Syndrome & it’s symptoms.
More troubling to me was his wife’s willingness to remain in his orbit. I too know something about NLP, and her body language and eye movement in the Table Meeting gave away a great deal about her sense of him.
Bottom line: who in their right mind would pay for or heed “Life Direction” advice from a woman who doesn’t have the sense and strength to leave this very unfit husband and father?
And if it turns out that he is just blatantly cruel, one has to hope CPS gets involved. While some might not agree with or understand the way they choose to raise their kids, that doesn’t make them the first parents to put overly large demands on their kids; many survive it and go on to be very capable and contributory citizens, and it can be a productive thing. But living in a home where belittling and cruelty is the order of the day is a FAR more unhealthy & dangerous foundation than paint-balling & some extra pounds!
Stephen Fowler is a horrid human being but I think something very important is being not just overlooked but denied. We live very much so in a society nearly destroying itself with a very active caste/class system that not only exist but has grown and evolved to include far more people than it did before. Stephen Fowler has embarrassed educated people for all of the wrong reasons. One being that he got caught saying what many people think, feel, and act on everyday. Many of these people have the power to hire and fire people and do so for many of the wrong reasons. They destroy what flickers of hope that those less fortunate than they are have for no other reason than they have the power to. That is right many many people get off on having the power to look down and cast dispersions on others… they are actively bias, prejudice and bigoted toward others who have views that do not mirror their own,,, or do not come from the same socio-economic background. He represents what so many people aspire to be. His tirade is no different and is no less offensive and devastating than what we have seen many times over in Wife Swap, American Idol, The Biggest Loser and a host of other reality TV shows. Since when is it OK to insult people for not being as educated or not being an ideal body weight? Even on daytime TV on shows like the View television personalities are irresponsible of what they are saying about what they are saying about people. So why is Stephen Fowler the enemy here? Is it because he highlight the real attitudes that people have about each other and it looks ugly when you actually see it?
I have read so many responses from people who feel the necessity to point out how high their IQ is and their many qualifications in often failed attempts to prove that they are not like the Fowler family but end up before their responses are complete they expose themselves as being very similar to them. I am not suggesting that all educated and affluent people behave exactly as the Fowler’s do but I am saying that far to many do have this attitude and if I had a nickel for every time I have heard people get on TV and make some redneck or comment about the lack of education of people from the south I would be a wealthy woman. It is usually acceptable conversation and embraced as fact somehow
Karma’s a bitch, if your as foul as Fowler…….
I am a rarity: a person who has lived and worked among highly- educated, liberal people and who gave it all up to move in among blue-collar people. I will swear before the God in heaven that the latter life is infinitely preferable. If you watch the clips, the saddest part is the Fowler’s little girl, and I have seen dozens of liberal households with children just like this: heavily indoctrinated, carefully fashioned to put performance above all else in life, missing even the slightest amount of normal childhood experience. I hope that nice woman in Missouri knows how lucky she is that she has been spared the life of Mrs. Fowler. What we saw there at the end of the show was a classic enabler/abuser relationship, and I can attest from experience that many of these so-called “cultured” males are vicious wife-abusers behind closed doors.
Stephen Fowler is no longer with SunLink.
Everything that Stephen Fowler said is the truth. Clearly, truthfulness hurts but just accept it. She was an overweight, uneducated, over opinionated women. Unfortunately, these are the least of the issues with the Longs. This is not about a crash of cultures or stereotyping people. We as Americans should not take the Longs as the typical American family. In fact, if that was the case then our country would have collapsed a long time ago. We would have succumbed to be a poor redneck country. We are the people making this a great a nation. Americans with a passion for culture, entrepreneurship, knowledge, innovations, sports. We are moving our country forward competing against Europeans, Asian countries. Not the Longs, they represent what is wrong with America. I don’t care about their eating habits, but I do care about their lack of vocabulary, no common sense and limited productivity. They have no appetite for knowledge and no thirst for progress. They don’t want to improve their modest ways of living but keep it. They cultivate HATE and ignorance in their children to past it from generation after generation. Am I supposed to be ok with that?. NO. I believe in America. I believe we are better than that. We have our own culture, values, and unbounded vision. We are the greatest nation because we pushed forward the barriers of ignorance. Are we moving backwards now?. I am NOT proud of the media trying to portrait our nation being represented by the Longs and starting a witch hunt against the Fowlers. This is not about them, this is about what is the truth and what needs to be changed in America. I hope we are better than that.
“I think the worst thing that James (his son) could do is to tell me that he wants to move to Missouri. What is wrong with the United States — people in the middle of the country frankly (laughs) are just like you. It’s amazing – uneducated, simple and without a clue about what’s going on in the world.” ~ Stephen Fowler, Jan. 30th episode of “Wife Swap”
During both world wars, it was mostly the “clueless Americans” from working class families throughout the middle of the country who gave their lives and bailed out Britain and France. After the end of WW II in 1947, the Truman Doctrine followed by the Marshall Plan pledged American financial aid for a generous program of European economic recovery. This is why Europe and Britain were able to rebuild and afford good social programs and national health care — while we go without!
And international class bigots like Fowler dare to insult those same Americans? For the past 65 years, Europeans have enjoyed longer life expectancies and higher living standards on the dime of poor working class American’s tax dollars that benefited everyone else — except Americans.
It was the tax dollars of working class Americans that funded the financial aid package to rebuild European nations after WW II. Who does that smug prick think paid for the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, which made social benefits and socialized medicine affordable for Britain and France? The Tooth Fairy?
Every day, 122 poor uninsured Americans die for lack of access to healthcare, 1 in 5 foreclosures are due to unaffordable medical bills, 1 in 4 bankruptcies are due to unaffordable medical bills and extremely high prices on medicine.
Stephen Fowler and the rest of Britain enjoy generous social programs and safety nets, made possible because of poor working class Americans whose taxes funded Europe’s economic recovery post-war. And for this, we are put down for our weight problems, our inability to afford university educations, healthy foods, and being “militaristic” and “fascist.”
If it wasn’t for our military and tax dollars off the backs of our poorer people who have been deprived of educations, travel opportunity, and healthcare while our taxes funded the rebuilding of Britain; Stephen Fowler would not have had the luxury of growing up with access to low-cost high quality medical and dental care so that his advanced education and opportunity to achieve economic success would have been possible.
His parents would not have had a nice middle class life due to the security that comes with having access to health and dental care so that he could go to a prestigious university. And it would be Stephen Fowler, instead of struggling Americans, living in a “podunk town” with nothing. Britain would have remained a pile of rubble and ended up as Hitler’s outhouse.
Fowler owes ALL Americans more than just a self-serving apology…he can do his part as a “world citizen” by repaying his fair share of the US taxes paid by working class Americans which helped him have a better life that would not have been made possible without the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.