Barry Rubin: Obama Era Updates Famous Charles Atlas, “97 Pound Weakling” Ad

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Obama Era Updates Famous Charles Atlas, “97 Pound Weakling” Ad

Here’s the famous Charles Atlas advertisement.

A skinny guy and pretty young woman in a bikini are walking on the beach. A big bully makes fun of him. When the skinny guy protests, the bully punches him, telling him to shut up.

“Darn it,” says Skinny Guy, “I’m tired of being a skinny scarecrow.” So to stop being a “97-pound weakling,” he joins the Charles Atlas Club, works out, gets muscles, and some time later (in front of the admiring young woman) he punches out the bully. The girl says, “Oh Joe you are a real he-man after all.”


Let’s analyze this advertisement as a lesson in foreign policy. How would the Obama Administration and contemporary expert/academic version of this ad go?

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press later this year. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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