"There are signs that this is the dawn of the new masculinity."

"Some recent news about men who are chucking their own careers to support the dreams and hopes of the women they love..."

The signs are a big law firm partner who quits to become "a supportive husband and do all I can to help [his new wife] achieve her mission to improve the world through music" and a new magazine — "Kindling Quarterly" — for stay-at-home fathers.

"[O]ne of the rare intellectual vocations that do not demand a sacrifice of one’s manhood."

= What Susan Sontag said about anthropology in 1963.

Quoted in a NYT article titled "How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist."

Obama's inauguration poet "tackles 'the intersection of his cultural identities as a Cuban-American gay man.'"

The poet is Richard Blanco, the verb "tackles" comes from Politico, and the quote within the quote is in the Presidential Inauguration Committee press release.

I'm not a poet, but I pay attention to images, and I find the picture of tackling an intersection absurd in a particularly amusing way. Intersection of his cultural identities is also absurd but only in that dry, dreary academic way that makes you want to say to all your children and grandchildren: Do not major in the humanities!

What amuses me about tackling an intersection is that it seems to reveal the author's anxiety about the masculinity of the gay poet. Why make us picture a football move? Admittedly, the verb tackle originally meant to equip (a ship) with the necessary furnishing and then to harness (a horse), and only later "To grip, lay hold of, take in hand, deal with; to fasten upon, attack, encounter (a person or animal) physically." So says the OED. But it's all pretty damned macho.

There's no Blanco poetry at the link, but there is a description of an essay "Afternoons as Endora" from a collection "My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them."

“According to [my grandmother], I was a no-good sissy — un mariconcito — the queer shame of the family,” Blanco wrote. “And she let me know it all the time: Why don’t we just sign you up for ballet lessons? Everyone thinks you’re a girl on the phone — can’t you talk like a man? I’d rather have a granddaughter who’s a whore than a grandson who is a faggot like you.”

Go here for a little more of the writing, including Blanco's description of dressing up like Endora and watching "Bewitched" on TV:

Together we'd turn Mrs. Kravitz into a chihuahua, Derwood into a donkey, or Uncle Arthur into a chair. We were unstoppable....

I was a helpless and scared child, powerless against my grandmother, while Endora was a mighty witch with limitless powers. Unlike Samantha, her foolish daughter, she was a witch who wasn't afraid of being a witch, and used her magic to get her way or enact revenge every time she had a chance.

A fantasy of power. Suitable for a presidential inauguration.

AND: More on Blanco:

"Since the beginning of the campaign, I totally related to [Obama's] life story and the way he speaks of his family, and of course his multicultural background,” Mr. Blanco said... “There has always been a spiritual connection in that sense. I feel in some ways that when I’m writing about my family, I’m writing about him."...

Cynics might say that in picking a Latino gay poet, Mr. Obama is covering his political bases....

Aw, come on. People observing the normal things that happen in politics don't deserve to be called "cynics." OED defines "cynic" as:

A person disposed to rail or find fault; now usually: One who shows a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions, and is wont to express this by sneers and sarcasms; a sneering fault-finder.

Oh, what the hell. I'll accept the label. With politicians, we should be cynics. By the way, "cynic" comes from the Greek for dog-like (which you can sort of see in the word currish, which echoes in churlish).

"I managed to get my head up and scream 'croc' and then this giant dragged me under again."

"I got my head above water again and this time I was swearing and saying get this thing off me. I was just screaming for help. I couldn't feel any pain but I could see his teeth sinking into my leg. I thought I was going to die. I could only see about four centimetres of the top of my leg and the rest was in the croc's gob."

Well, clearly she survived, since we have that quote, but how did she survive? (The saltwater crocodile was 3 meters long.) Her friend on the shore — Al Sartori — went in:

"I jumped into the water and on to its back and stuck my thumbs into its eyes until I felt it start to slacken off.... I picked up the croc and chucked it back into the water and it came back at me. It was pretty heavy."

Great heroism by Satori! A euonym? "Satori is considered a 'first step' or embarkation toward nirvana."

The student's mind must be prepared by rigorous study, with the use of koans, and the practice of meditation to concentrate the mind, under the guidance of a teacher.... Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai (無門慧開)... struggled for six years with koan "Zhaozhou’s dog"...

The koan is: "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" Does a crocodile?

Wumen, having understood the koan wrote this poem:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

I know a poem about a crocodile:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

Sperm decline...

... in France.

Prof Richard Sharpe, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "Something in our modern lifestyle, diet or environment like chemical exposure, is causing this.

"We still do not know which are the most important factors, but perhaps the most likely is a combination, a double whammy of changes, such as a high-fat diet combined with increased environmental chemical exposures."

I love the way it's the usual suspects — things you're supposed to want to fix anyway, and here's one more reason why. How about considering the possibility of some causes that would be uncomfortable to admit, things you don't want to perceive as problems?

WaPo presents Obama's failure to maintain eye contact as "a successful technique."

Of all the pro-Obama reframing I've read in the press, this may be the most ridiculous. It's Sarah Kaufman — WaPo's Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic — purporting to answer the question "who won the battle of body language" in the second presidential debate (boldface added):

“In the last four years you’ve cut permits and licenses on federal lands and federal waters in half,” Romney charged, turning to his opponent and hacking at the air.

“Not true,” Obama called out, eyes blazing. Then he looked away.



“How much did you cut the licenses by?” Romney continued, stepping closer to Obama. His finger jabbed the air. Obama tried to cut him off. Romney kept coming at him, and Obama got out of his chair, his head high and tilted back a bit, which felt like a silent taunt. (Say it again — I dare ya.)

Romney stepped forward, staring at Obama. The two men locked eyes.

You held your breath.

Obama looked away, and you let it out.

Time and again, as the tension built, Obama defused it with his eyes. It was a successful technique. He seemed to have decided that he would match Romney move for move, going so far at one point as to step toward moderator Candy Crowley’s desk so he was exactly the same distance away from it as his opponent...

Obama... didn’t match his opponent’s chilling gaze. Romney wanted a staring contest, but Obama didn’t take that bait. He shunted it aside, cutting his eyes to the audience. Or he’d diminish the threat with a joke...

Obama made a show of avoiding his opponent. He looked to Crowley with a grin, widened it to show his teeth, let out a chuckle. Finally, in a smooth legato, he delivered a crippling zinger: “You know, I — I don’t look at my pension.” He shot Romney a look, and just as quickly glanced away. He addressed the punch line to the audience:

“It’s not as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long.”

It’s not as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long. Great line, taken out of context, in a who-is-more-macho contest.

But Obama knew, perhaps intuitively, perhaps by virtue of a lifetime of guardedness, how to avoid escalation.

He simply looked away.

Obama has a problem maintaining eye contact. Romney proved his dominance over and over. And the dance critic says Obama won with his dazzling grin and pirouetting away from confrontation.

Tell Putin, after the election I will have more flexibility.

Tagg Romney would like to jump out of his seat and "rush down to the stage" and "take a swing at" President Obama...

... or so he said, laughing, when asked how he felt when Obama called his dad a liar. 

"But you know you can’t do that because, well, first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because that’s the nature of the process."

The most troubling thing about Tagg's remark is:
	The Romney family may have a genetic or cultural tendency toward violent impulses.
	Tagg learned that the "nature of the process" includes lying from Mitt.
	The Romneys are drinking overconfidence these days.
	Nothing is troubling here. Tagg's a refreshingly normal guy.
pollcode.com free polls

Finn, Asher, Henry, Milo, Jasper, James, Jude, Atticus, Rowan, Owen.

The first 10 of the top 100 boys' names for 2012, from Nameberry, which is "geared to non-traditional but deeply-rooted boys' names":

Celebrities and pop culture are important, but not as important as for girls. We see Finn, partially inspired by "Glee," at No. 1 and Atticus in the Top 10 thanks to "To Kill A Mockingbird." While other names - Jude, Liam, Emmett, Hudson, Arlo - have risen on the heels of popular stars, celebrity babies, and movie and TV characters - we see this influence on boys' names less pronounced than on girls'.

Boys' names are getting softer. The whole badass boys' name - Stryker, Wilder, Maverick - thing aside, we see a softening of boys' names, with vowel endings (Milo, Levi, Ezra), sibilant sounds (Asher, Dashiell, Sebastian), and choices that are derived from girls' names or can also be used for girls (Rowan, Emerson, Elliot).

"Scary, grown-up thoughts have shriveled his video game sack..."

Masculinity tied to video game prowess tied to the consumption of Slim Jims in this ad, discussed here:

Jonathan Byrne, an associate creative director at Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco, which is creating the campaign, said the ads are intended to balance promoting manliness with hanging on to the joys of boyhood.

“It’s not just about manliness, it’s also bucking responsibility,” Mr. Byrne said of the ads. “Avoiding the growing-up thing is a big part of it.”

Whatever you think of video games and Slim Jims, what do you think of conflating manliness and boyhood?

An animated sequence shows a kidney-shaped organ called a video game sack in a man’s midsection, which collapses as it collides with items like a wedding cake, minivan and baby carriage.

In this trope, actual adult manhood is feminizing. Arguably, this is the point of marriage and the reason why heterosexual marriage is held out to be the building block of society: The overly masculine young man needs to be diluted with femininity in order to do the things that we as a whole want him to do — be economically productive and produce the next generation. In this view, playing video games — and generally camping out in everlasting boyhood — is a preservation of full manhood. A transgressive thought... but that's a big part of advertising, making the consumer feel that they're a big old rebel for purchasing some unremarkable product... this dessicated strip of meat...

What is the most pathetic dessicated strip of meat?
	The 30-year-old guy who sits around playing video games.
	The married man who drives a minivan and pushes a baby carriage.
	A Slim Jim.
pollcode.com free polls

"[M]en who had voted for the losing presidential candidate... suffered a big drop in their testosterone after hearing of his defeat."

Some study found, and Victoria Bassetti riffs on that finding in the opinion pages of The New York Times (under caricatures of high and low masculinity):

Is it possible voting makes male voters too vulnerable? Could the unpleasant feelings male voters experience when their candidates lose discourage them from revisiting the polls? No wonder they stop voting. It hurts too much....

Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry will come up with a little blue pill to make people voters. But until then, we may need to man up and face facts. For all our idealism about voting and democracy, we have created a needlessly complex and burdensome voting system. We can’t fix the hormonal fallout from voting, but biology provides another reason we should think about making voting simpler and easier.

Oh, boring. This turns into one more NYT article about how voter ID laws and such are bad. I'd like to see more on this topic of men's hormones and political decisionmaking. If there is this deep, physical need to be on the winning side, then those who want the men's votes need to work on the illusion that their candidate is likely to win. You know, skew the polls, get the media to pump up your guy, portray him as unbeatable, popular, etc.

But don't go too far. If you make men overconfident that your guy is a huge winner, and then there's a debate and he looks way different from what he was pumped up to look like, he's all deflated, and he seems tired and listless, and the other candidate stands up straight and delivers strong points, these men will have to switch sides to preserve their manhood.

Related: "Vote like your manhood depends on it... because it kinda does."

"If the ascent of women has been much exaggerated, so has the descent of men."

Asserts Stephanie Coontz:

Men’s irresponsibility and bad behavior is now a stock theme in popular culture. But there has always been a subset of men who engage in crude, coercive and exploitative behavior. What’s different today is that it’s harder for men to get away with such behavior in long-term relationships. Women no longer feel compelled to put up with it and the legal system no longer condones it. The result is that many guys who would have been obnoxious husbands, behaving badly behind closed doors, are now obnoxious singles, trumpeting their bad behavior on YouTube.

In the old days — which social conservatives would like to continue — women locked men into marriage and did what they could to tame them and tie them to a socially and economically useful way of life for the benefit of all of us. (This is why the phrase "marriage is between a man and a woman" is so deeply meaningful and important.)

I'm extracting the Coontz bits that interest me, so here's another (shorn of its connection to that other one, which you can click on the link to read):

One thing standing in the way of further progress for many men is the same obstacle that held women back for so long: overinvestment in their gender identity instead of their individual personhood....

Just as the feminine mystique discouraged women in the 1950s and 1960s from improving their education or job prospects, on the assumption that a man would always provide for them, the masculine mystique encourages men to neglect their own self-improvement on the assumption that sooner or later their “manliness” will be rewarded....

Now men need to liberate themselves from the pressure to prove their masculinity.

If you wouldn't be so much of a man, you wouldn't suffer so much from The Decline of Man. Women are on the upswing, but you can join us, be with us, but you're going to have to shed that manliness and become... An Individual... like Us the Women... who have ascended.

Dr. Helen wonders "if men are going Galt, staying home and collecting unemployment or no longer need jobs because they don’t get married as often?"

"Or is it that they just can’t get a job because the industries they work in are no longer hiring? Could the Obama administration also be part of the problem, focusing only on women’s jobs and not on those of men? Or a combination of these. What do you think?"

On that point about the Obama administration's focus on women's jobs, remember that Obama's original idea was to have a stimulus that would produce jobs for men — who "need to do something that fits with how they define themselves as men":

As the room chewed over the non-PC phrase “women’s work,” trying to square the senator’s point with their analytical models, [Alan] Krueger—who was chief economist at the Department of Labor in the mid-1990s at the tender age of thirty-four—sat there silently, thinking that in all his years of studying men and muscle, he had never used that term. But Obama was right. Krueger wondered how his latest research on happiness and well-being might take into account what Obama had put his finger on: that work is identity, that men like to build, to have something to show for their sweat and toil.

“Infrastructure,” he blurted out. “Rebuilding infrastructure.”

And then what happened? How was Obama — with his concern about manhood — swallowed up and enfolded within the Party of Women?

Interesting to see his desire to build masculine pride by giving men things to build, because men like to build... and now, in 2012, to find him bumbling and mumbling things like "You didn't build that."

Well, we — or they, the men — didn't build that if that is the infrastructure, the roads and bridges you were talking about. (Remember the big roads-and-bridges theme of September 2011?) And — I wish I had a searchable text of everything said from the stage last week — did anyone even mention roads and bridges at the Democratic Convention?

"Liberals hate male strength. Liberals do not like male strength at all."

Proclaimed Rush Limbaugh the other day.

They don't like the use of force unless it's for their own ends.  They love the military when they run it, but at no other time.  They're a bunch of metrosexuals.  Metrosexual culture is pacifist.  That's why metrosexuals are liberals that rely on government force to perpetrate their agenda.  They don't do it themselves.  Government force takes the place of powerful men.

This came at the end of a rant about how liberals want to ban football. I thought it was a tad strange, actually, even though I do tend to think that liberals would like to set up the government so that women would see it as serving an array of purposes traditionally assigned to husbands.

"It wasn't very long ago they were trying to tell us that Romney was a bully.... Now he's a wimp?"

Rush Limbaugh riffed on the new Newsweek cover today:

Calling Romney a wimp is aimed at suppressing the white blue-collar vote.  Blue-collar voters hate wimps.  You know, the working white voters that Obama has abandoned, and now whose votes they're trying to suppress, this is all about trying to make those people think that Romney is a wuss....

Rush goes on to say that if anyone's a wuss, it's Obama:

We've all seen Obama throw a baseball.  He looks not even as good as an average girl throwing a baseball....

That is: You want to talk about who's wussiest? We'll crush you. We'll knock you down and cut off your hair...

But what I'd like to say is: Attacking a man as "wussy" is homophobic. Do the Democrats care about gay people or not? The effort to label Romney a "wimp" is a betrayal of liberal values. It's hypocritical.

What's the best response to the Romney's-a-wimp attack?
	Ignore it.
	Use it as evidence of pathetic media bias.
	Punch back with the idea that Obama is the wimp.
	Defend Romney as a strong, brave man.
	Make the homophobia/hypocrisy accusation.
	Flip it: Wimp is good. Wimp power! It's the new gentlemanliness.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Rush introduced the word "wuss." I changed some of my uses of "wuss" to "wimp." "Wimp" is the word Newsweek used against Romney (and back in 1987 against George H.W. Bush).

ALSO: My quick research says "wuss" and "wimp" mean exactly the same thing. The OED says the origin of "wuss" is "uncertain" and "[p]erhaps a blend of wimp... and puss..." That is, "puss," defined as a name for a cat. "Pussy" — according to the OED, goes back to the 1500s, meaning "A girl or woman exhibiting characteristics associated with a cat, esp. sweetness or amiability." Beginning in 1904, "pussy" is seen denoting "A sweet or effeminate male; (in later use chiefly) a weakling, a coward, a sissy. Also: a male homosexual." "Pussy" meaning "female genitals," goes back to 1699. (And there's this from 1865: "My poor pussy, rent and sore, Dreaded yet longed for one fuck more." "Philocomus" Love Feast.)

The OED defines "wuss" as "A weak or ineffectual person." The earliest usage is from 1976:

1976 Campus Slang (Univ. N. Carolina, Chapel Hill) (typescript) Nov. 6 Come on you wuss, hit a basket..! John's a wuss.
1981 C. Crowe Fast Times at Ridgemont High 57 You out to meet her first, you wuss.
1984 Washington Post (Nexis) 28 Aug. c1 Everybody thinks I'm a wuss. And I don't impress any of the stunt women at all.
1996 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 24 Jan. 29 (caption) Give us y'lunch, Hooper, you great wuss!
2003 R. Williams Fallout 22 Shanice I had him cryin his eyes out to me... Ronnie Wuss.

The OED defines "wimp" as  "A feeble or ineffectual person; one who is spineless or ‘wet.'" The origin is "uncertain," but perhaps based on "whimper." We're told this word is "Used only as a term of abuse or contempt," a notation that doesn't appear with "wuss," which makes me think "wimp" is the harsher word.

The usages of "wimp" go back to 1920:

1920   G. Ade Hand-made Fables 97   Next day he sought out the dejected Wimp.
1964   Amer. Speech 39 119   A baff is ‘a person who does silly things deliberately’; but wimp is still mysterious and undefined in my notes.
1966   Current Slang Winter 8   Wimp, a backward person... He's a real wimp on a date.
1970   N.Y. Mag. 16 Nov. 10/2   That Goodell, he's nothing but a wimp. And this Ottinger, it got so I couldn't stand the sight of him.
1976   New Musical Express 31 July 8/2   Although he's best known here as a fairly muscular MOR wimp,..he has a big reputation as a prodigiously talented multi-media whizz in the States.
1979   T. Gifford Hollywood Gothic (1980) xxii. 220   Solly Roth and his wimp of a son..what a wet bunch that family was.
1981   P. Theroux Mosquito Coast vi. 48,   I can afford to be robbed... But what about the poor wimps who can't afford it?
1984   Sunday Tel. 30 Dec. 15/6   In daily life Ronnie Lee is a wimp. Put him in a balaclava and he thinks he's a he-man.
1985   She July 140/2   Masseur! Huh! He sounds a right little wimp.

I'm interested in that use of "wet" (in the definition and in the 1979 quote). The OED gives as the 15b definition of "wet": Inept, ineffectual, effete; also as quasi-adv. and in comb. wet fish, a wet individual, a ‘drip’. Also spec. in Polit. (see quots. 1981, 1983)." Here are those 2 quotes:

1981   Observer 26 July 12/3   The term ‘Wet’ was originally used by Mrs Thatcher, who meant it in the old sense of ‘soppy’, as in ‘What do you mean the unions won't like it, Jim? Don't be so wet.’ It meant feeble, liable to take the easy option, lacking intellectual and political hardness. Like so many insults, it was gleefully adopted by its victims, and so came by its present meaning of liberal, leftish, anti-ideological....
1983   Age (Melbourne) 5 Oct. 13   Britain's Tory Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, began this vogue terminology by contemptously dismissing dewy-eyed dissenters from her arid Right-wing policies as ‘wet’.

Fascinating! Stepping back, I can see softness and weakness associated with the left. It's the conservatives who think they are hard, strong, manly, and courageous, and this must make liberals want to get the accusation of wussiness/wimpiness going the other way.

And let's not forget that the most famous political use of the word "wimp" was not the 1987 "wimp factor" Newsweek cover. It was "Mush from the Wimp" — which referred to Jimmy Carter. "Mush from the Wimp" has its own Wikipedia page:

On Saturday, March 15, 1980, the Boston Globe ran an editorial that began:

Certainly it is in the self-interest of all Americans to impose upon themselves the kind of economic self-discipline that President Carter urged repeatedly yesterday in his sober speech to the nation. As the President said, inflation, now running at record rates, is a cruel tax, one that falls most harshly upon those least able to bear the burden.

There was nothing exceptional about it except the headline: "Mush from the Wimp". The headline — which was supposed to have read "All Must Share The Burden" — was corrected during the press run after 161,000 copies had already gone to circulation.

In November 1982, Globe editorial page editor Kirk Scharfenberg wrote a op-ed piece discussing his creation of the phrase and the use of "wimp" as a popular political insult afterwards. "I meant it as an in-house joke and thought it would be removed before publication," he explained. "It appeared in 161,000 copies of the Globe the next day."

"Three young men are being hailed as heroes for their old-fashioned chivalry and courage under fire in saving the lives of their girlfriends."

Matt McQuinn, 27, Jonathan Blunk, 26, and Alex Teves, 24 — each died protecting a woman in the Aurora theater massacre. That is, out of 12 individuals who died, 3 were men instinctively performing the traditional, masculine protective role.

What happened to all the manly men?

The NYT asks a bunch of people, including Natasha Scripture, who says:

Come to think of it, I haven’t met a manly man in quite some time. Maybe because most of them live in Montana. Or Texas. Or Sicily! They’re certainly rare sightings in New York City because here the abundant local species seems to be the metrosexual.

Oh! Metrosexual. I haven't seen that word for a long time. I'm thinking it fell out of fashion because... Barack Obama? But it's reviving because somebody at the NYT thinks Obama is manlier than Mitt Romney. (He just points at a name on a list and a guy half a globe away explodes — to smithereens.) But, no, maybe it's not that. Maybe it's "50 Shades of Grey" being a big bestseller and somebody at the NYT inferring that their female readers are tired of less manly men, so it's time to bring back the old epithet. Or, hell, maybe ladies are reading "50 Shades of Grey" because of Barack Obama. Whatever. Anyway, back to Natasha Scripture (love the name):

And as much as I can appreciate a man who knows his sashimi, the more carnal, female side of me wants to see him tuck into a heaping plate of meat and potatoes; and to toss aside the cologne and let pheromones take charge. Yes, gentlemen, you’re allowed to sweat in my divine presence.

Also, when it comes to so-called manly traits, I would be kind of a masochist if I didn’t want a man with some level of emotional availability. But please, is it too much to ask that he not cry on a first date?...

I hope we don’t become so much like each other that we end up essentially morphing into one androgynous being. That would just be plain weird.

Lots of things are weird. Like longing for masculinity, then calling yourself "divine" and dispensing precise instructions for just enough but not much manliness. But it's not so weird to sigh about how everyone you think you might want is somewhere other than on the small island where you live. But what can you do? Go to Montana?

There are 7 other essays in this NYT set....

Mark Simpson, author of "Metrosexy: A 21st Century Self-Love Story," says:

Continuing to fret about [manliness] means men being sold prissy lists of “manly” dos and don'ts. Or reactionary ideology, such as the mendacious “menaissance.” Or a dodgy daydream of a “manly” past, such as an impossibly pretty, fastidious advertising creative, who is also a basket-case army deserter. And entirely fictional.

What? Those are words, and I know what they all mean. But I don't know what they mean together. Presumably: Stop thinking about it.

Joel Stein,  author of "Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity," says:

I got messed up by my feminist mom in the 1970s, who taught me that gender was a social construct. I can’t believe that social experiment went on as long as it did, since it’s clear by month six of having a child that William does not want a doll....

His boy is masculine. Problem solved for Joel Stein.

Still 5 more essays, but that's it for me.

"This will be my last political campaign, no matter what. I've got nothing else to run for."

President Obama, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, yesterday. The "I've got nothing else to run for" is a response to a sad "oh" that follows the "last campaign" remark.

Via Drudge, which is continuing its black-and-white theme, now with Putin top and center — crouching and exposing his muscular arms — above a smiling Romney and an eye-blacked Drew Brees. The picture of Obama is, as it was yesterday, in the right-hand column. Today, it's a photograph — a nice photograph, with a hint of a smile. Also in Obama's column, Chinese ideograms above a link "China Ascends to No. 2 on FORTUNE 500..." Maybe the ideograms say "We're #2" (or "We try harder"). The stack of links between Obama's image and the Chinese writing reads:

'This Will Be My Last Political Campaign No Matter What'...
GALLUP: APPROVE SLIPS TO 44%...
Women outnumber men on US Olympic team...
Swedish billionaire's son arrested as U.S.-born wife found dead...

I'm getting a decline-of-Western-civilization theme out of Drudge's new black-and-white trend. There's Putin on top, looking hyper-masculine. The Chinese are rising up (economically). And Obama's all used up. Nowhere to go. We talked about that back in April, after I received email from his campaign saying  "In a few days, I'll be hitting the trail for my last campaign." I said:

The man is 50 years old. His career is young. He's packing it in so early? This troubles me. Why no more stamina in the political arena?

I mean, what if he loses in November? He could run again. He could let 3 presidential terms pass and come back and only be as old as Romney is right now!

But even if he wins, what's he going to do? He can't run for President again, but there are other elective offices. Look at John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, and Andrew Johnson. All of them went on to seek other elective office and to win....

Why doesn't Obama have more gumption? It makes him seem too weak even now as he seeks reelection. Last campaign. That's annoying.

By contrast, Putin has gumption. Stamina. Staying power. And, by the way, he's sending warships to Syria.

But what's in Drudge's column 1? The only photograph of a person is Obama's brother — George Obama — the one who lives in a hut. (Rush Limbaugh's been riffing about that for years.) The other Obama is being used in some right-wing propaganda film. Easy pickings.  The man needs some money.

The top photograph in column 1 is Saturn. (Yesterday's Drudge had us worrying about the sun.) There's a "Strange Vortex Discovered on Saturn Moon...." Just above Saturn is "Wasserman Schultz: 'It Would Be Nice If We Had Candidate for President Who Was Committed To America'..." Yes, yes, let's stick with the strange vortex that is the American presidential election. For some reason, the Wasserman Schultz line is the only thing Drudge italicizes. Perhaps that's a prompt to read the quote sarcastically.

Clicking through, I see that Wasserman Schultz has radically changed her hairstyle since her appearance on Fox News Sunday (June 8). Did someone decide she needed to look more conservative/conventional/feminine?

Wasserman Schultz point, in this new clip, in this new hair, is about Mitt Romney stashing money outside of the United States:

Mitt Romney needs to come clean and release multiple years of his tax returns so we can see why he invested in a Bermuda corporation and transferred it to his wife's name the day before he became Governor of Massachusetts.

So we can see why he's invested in Swiss bank accounts and accounts in the Cayman Islands. And you know, we also need to know why does -- what is the allure of investments out of the country. When he headed up Bain Capital, he was a pioneer in outsourcing and shipped jobs overseas.

It would be nice if we had a candidate for president who was committed to America. Mitt Romney is committed to making sure that either he makes the most money as humanly possible, or his investors do. 

Imagine a man who tried to make as much money as possible! The Democratic Party is hoping Americans have been trained to think of that as a bad thing.

It's the decline of Western civilization, when we no longer flex muscles, we give up and let China take over. There's nothing else to run for.

We can always run for... cover.

Well-behaved women don't deserve a spot at Princeton.

The Atlantic has a long article with a title I feel like I've seen a hundred times: "Why Women Still Can’t Have It All."  It's very putting-the-duh-in-dull. I'm not saying you should read it. I just want to talk about the penultimate paragraph:

I continually push the young women in my classes to speak more. 

The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Somebody please tell me why Princeton University — Princeton University! — is admitting women who need to be continually pushed to speak more. In the 21st century. They don't deserve the seats they fill. They shouldn't be coddled. They should be flunked out. You get into Princeton and you sit there too timid — or too withholding — to speak? Unacceptable. The teacher shouldn't be prodding you.

They must gain the confidence to value their own insights and questions, and to present them readily. 

Is this kindergarten? This is Princeton! How many applications for admission did Princeton turn down in the process of matriculating these ladies?

Yesterday, I saw the old bumper sticker: "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History," and we had a conversation about whether the sentiment had any relevance today. I took the position that it did, because women still succumb to the cultural expectation that they should be pleasing and well-liked. It's a problem. Get over it or don't, but why are you occupying classroom space that could be used to good effect by someone who doesn't need a university professor to nurture her to the point where she can "present" her "insights" "readily"? If you'd confessed your limitation on your application form, the university could — and should — have rejected you.

My husband agrees...

A classic feminist line!

... but he actually tries to get the young men in his classes to act more like the women—to speak less and listen more. If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal. 

Yes, men. You need to back off and behave more like the women who need the professor to continually push them to value their insights so that they may present them readily. The future depends on your going beta.

We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us.

Insist. Try a petite stamping of the foot while you insist. Yes, you can, little lady. And little men: Behave yourselves!

Absurd!

"For boys who never question the boy code, it slowly turns into the 'bro code' or the man-box as they enter adulthood."

"When men stop questioning their own gender conditioning, it keeps them stuck in an immature stage of development that Sociologist Michael Kimmel calls 'guyland.' Guyland is when a man refuses to grow up and then behaves in ways so as to not be seen as unmanly, gay, or feminine. The way out of the man-box is straightforward and yet, will require more 'work.'"

Are you suffering out there in your "man-box"?

"Our whole society is based on... making women nod."

Video found after a search for "making women nod" — which I knew was a longstanding Bill Maher theme — which I got the idea to do after writing about Barack Obama saying 51 times in "Dreams From My Father" that people "nodded". It was probably a meaningless writerly tic from a neophyte writer, but perhaps it's significant. Whatever you think of Maher, listen to the montage about  the emasculation of men as manifested in the behavior of making women nod. Then think about the agenda of the Democratic Party, their asserted pacifist position in the so-called War on Women, their mascot "Julia," and things of that sort.