ALESSANDRA STANLEY I am the man! Will (Mather Zickel) hollers into his headset after scoring a kill in a video game. His wife,yelling from another room,orders him to pipe down. Im the man, he repeats in a meek whisper. Man Up!,which begins next Tuesday on ABC,is one of several new sitcoms that make fun of men,so much so that the word man itself is treated as a joke. ABCs other emasculation comedy starts this Tuesday and is called Last Man Standing.. It stars Tim Allen as Mike,who has to stay home to tend to his daughters when his business retracts to an online shopping site. Man Up! is about Judd Apatow-ish men who are treated as children. Last Man Standing is a little less humble and more of a backlash against all the man bashing. Like so many other men on television these days,the put-upon heroes of Man Up! and Last Man Standing are victims of a changed economy and a new social order in which men are the new women. Men have always been the butt of sitcom jokes,but in the days when they did dominate the weaker sex,they were mocked more for their manliness than their metrosexuality. Even henpecked husbands on shows like According to Jim and Everybody Loves Raymond erred by being blunderingly male: Jim paid his sister-in-law to pick out jewelry he could give his wife; Raymond erased the wedding tape by recording a football game over it. Nowadays men get on their wives and girlfriends nerves by not being manly enough. The focus on mens failings partly reflects that female viewers outnumber men; network executives,it seems,know what women want. The recession has only made things worse for men,which is why it is sometimes referred to as a mancession. As of last month,unemployment rates were slightly higher for men than women. Maybe more significantly,studies show the wage gap between the sexes is narrowing,with women gaining on men.
