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Maureen Himmler by Bernard Chapin
Usually her columns are merely pointless tripe, and I choose the more offensive one to refute each week. However, I have no such leeway today as these ramblings mandate a quick and lethal counter-strike. It’s as if there is a Major behind me screaming, “Bring up the flame throwers!” In this piece, her resentment is unleashed upon masculinity in general. It is uncannily similar to her “Shrinking Y” assail on males in its demeaning tone. In the midst of what is presumptively a political scrawl, we witness Maureen’s disgust with masculinity seep out like radioactive waste from a kitchen trashcan. The un-leaven gargoyle is at her worst in this strange paragraph which should not stand alone: “Spike TV, the first men's channel, offers ‘Baywatch,’ a Pamela Anderson cartoon called ‘Stripperella,’ ‘The A-Team,’ ‘American Gladiators,’ ‘Car and Driver’ and ‘Trucks!’” So what? What’s the point? I guess it’s that she’s too good for those television shows. What about soap operas? They are as directionless and worthless as any other hour of entertainment. They are of no deeper meaning than “American Gladiators.” Here it is evident that, like many of the others who howl for diversity, Maureen Dowd cannot accept anyone else being different from her. This is just another example of self-righteous, leftist, elitism infecting the media. By her contorted logic she arrives at the conclusion that because some guys watch television shows that Dowd would not, our entire gender is a futile endeavor. This is categorically false, but what is true is that Maureen is a miserable wretch who can’t keep her dysphoria to herself. Next she attacks conservatives (perhaps her second favorite target) saying, “Conservatives want to co-opt all this free-floating testosterone and copyright the bravery shown on 9/11. They disparage liberals as people who scorn ‘traditional’ male traits and sanction gay romance.” First, “liberals” are not liberal. They’re leftists. They believe in the sexual harassment industry, speech codes, and hate crime legislation. I’m a liberal; they are not. They’re coercive utopians. Second, leftists do scorn traditional male traits. This column is a perfect example. Columns by Natalie Angier, in the same paper, illustrate this as well. The privileged left believe that women are saintly and men are evil. Those of us who actually have to deal with people everyday know that this is far from the case. Third, the “sanction gay romance” comment emerges from the ether. She’s playing to her constituency here and not attempting to win any arguments. No conservative gives a gosh darn what kind of romance occurs with gay members of the population. Our only request is that we shouldn’t be forced to watch, participate or give legal sanction to it. What flowers gays buy for one another or the Sushi bars they congregate in is of no concern to me or any other conservative. The real reason that she wrote this piece is to call to the reader’s attention how silly it is for politicians to have to prove that they possess manly characteristics. She tries to do this by training her bitter, weathered eyes on specific politicians. She mentions the Francophilic, hair product-loving, Democratic candidate John Kerry and says that, “Mr. Kerry, a Boston Democrat, had thought about announcing in front of a warship, wrote The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson, but felt the need for something bigger, to stage a more chesty confrontation with Mr. Bush.” She mentions that Kerry shouldn’t have to worry about appearing masculine as he won many medals in Vietnam. What she leaves out is that Kerry repudiated his heroic acts by throwing his medals away during a protest march on Washington. However, are masculine virtues intrinsic to good leadership? Absolutely, and the reason people like Dowd do not understand this is that they have no idea why we have a government in the first place. Over the course of the last few months, I have grown all too familiar with Dowd’s work [sic], and I’ve found that she is chronically confused as to why we have a nation state. A government should not exist to provide some citizens with advantages over the others (as is the case with affirmative action). A government should not exist to pay artists to critique our society. A government should not exist to steal one’s property and earnings. A government exists to defend its people. That’s it. The armed forces of the United States are not ruled by newspaper columnists. They are ruled by a commander in chief. When the commander in chief is an indecisive free-rider, national security is compromised, just as it was during the Clinton Administration. Dowd wanders near the truth but stumbles in other direction when she acknowledged: “In presidential races, voters look for the fatherly protector. In the 90's, contenders showed softer sides, crying, wearing earth tones, confessing to family therapy.” That is, of course, correct. It tells the reader just how much the nineties were a holiday from history. What good can a crying, blubbering male do for the people he is paid to protect? No good whatsoever. Had Dowd considered this she would have saved the two of us considerable time this morning. Politicians try to depict themselves as being masculine figures for good reason. A masculine man acts purposefully and forcefully– which is integral to providing a meaningful defense of one’s land and people. If we had squirrely, whiney, leaders like Miss Dowd, then we’d have to conduct public opinion polls in France and Germany before responding to vicious murderers like Al Qaeda. She should be ashamed of herself, but, as readers of “the two minute mock” are painfully aware, shame is not something of which Miss Dowd is capable of experiencing. Masculine virtues will always have a place in the world; particularly in times of terror. The capacity to stoically deal with adversity and to unemotionally deal with crisis are invaluable traits. Her close to this particular “liberties” delusion is yet another indication of the joke she regards men and masculinity as being. She asks, “Could the real men please find some real men?” It’s a stupid question. We’ve already found one. His name is George W. Bush. I could care less about his personal likes, dislikes, traits or how he appears on an aircraft carrier. What I care about is that he possesses the manly virtues of strong decision making and that he understands that those who bow before tyrants will be tyrannized by them forever. Maureen, you’ll never get it. It’s a human thing. Bernard Chapin is a writer in Chicago. |
What
I thought would be a normal Sunday has now been interrupted by Maureen
Dowd’s latest polemic, |
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