Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

March 21, 2006

First He's Stupid, Then He's Evil, Now He's...Manly?

We've heard all sorts of reasons why President Bush is a lousy president. Among them are: he's evil (a la Adolf Hitler) and stupid (primates are considered to be his betters). Now, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has come up with something new: he's too manly.

The undisputed manliness of the Bush White House stands in contrast to its predecessors and wannabes. If Republicans are the Daddy Party and Democrats the Mommy Party, the Clinton White House often operated like Mansfield's vision of an estrogen-fueled kaffeeklatsch: indecisive and undisciplined. (Okay, there were some unfortunate, testosterone-filled moments, too.) Bill Clinton's would-be successor, Al Gore, was mocked for enlisting Naomi Wolf to help him emerge as an alpha male; after that, French-speaking John Kerry had to give up windsurfing and don hunting gear to prove he was a real man. And Bush's father, of course, had to battle the Wimp Factor. Mansfield recalls Thatcher's manly admonition to 41 on the eve of the Persian Gulf War: "Don't go wobbly on me, George."

No wimpiness worries now. This is an administration headed by a cowboy boot-wearing brush-clearer, backstopped by a quail-shooting fly fisherman comfortable with long stretches of manly silence -- very "Brokeback Mountain," except this crowd considers itself too manly for such PC Hollywood fare. "I would be glad to talk about ranchin', but I haven't seen the movie," Bush told a questioner.

So now man bashing, which has become quite popular in the last decade or so (for example, my e-mail is constantly being bombarded with "men are stupid" jokes), has become fair game when discussing Bush administration foreign policy.

I am somewhat surprised that Marcus would take this tack, considering her view of the Larry Summers vs. feminists at Harvard flap.

Is it so heretical, though, so irredeemably oafish, to consider whether gender differences also play some role? As the daughter of two scientists and the mother of two daughters, I think not. After all, scientists are reporting day by day about their breakthroughs in understanding the genetic basis of diseases or personality traits. Brain studies of men and women show that the two genders use different parts of their brain to process language. (Men tend to be left-siders, women both-lobers.)

If Marcus thinks biology might be a reasonable explanation for why fewer women choose scientific careers, why does she seem to think manliness is suddenly such a bad thing? After all, isn't manliness the result of thousands of years of biological evolution?

Denigrating the president's manliness may score Marcus brownie points with the left -- after all, don't many of them think that men should be emasculated so that men and women can finally be "equal"? -- but it does nothing to further debate. According to Marcus, "the swaggering dismissal of dissenting views as the carping of those not on the team" is part and parcel of her proof that manliness is at the root of a war she disagrees with.

That's not proof, it's namecalling. Something the left and its MSM cheerleaders have become quite good at, since it gets more press than nonexistent alternatives from the Democrats.