From The Guadian, 3/18/06:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1733675,00.html
The star-spangled fantasyland of the fake and home of the bogus
US politicians aim for rugged, macho images because insecure voters
want to feel that real men are in charge
Linda Colley
Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian
In America, the excitement about ***** Cheney's shooting accident is
over.
There are no more talkshow debates about why he took so long to make a
statement, and no more news reports about his 78-year-old victim.
Even the delicious contrast between the vice president's bravery in
the face of small birds and the deferments he took to keep from going
to Vietnam no longer raises eyebrows.
Yet the shrewdest comment I heard on the incident was rarely touched
on.
What did the vice-president think he was doing, inquired a serious
hunter?
Real men got up early and went into the countryside hunting wild quail
alone with their dog.
Going in groups to a farm to shoot specially bred birds was for
sissies.
It wasn't Cheney's involvement in masculine pursuits that was
noteworthy;
it was that the mode of masculinity on show was bogus.
Bogus masculine posturing seems to be the style of the current US
administration.
Its most conspicuous expression was perhaps Bush's "Mission
Accomplished" photo opportunity after the invasion of Iraq.
There he was, this veteran of the home guard, clad in a snug-fitting
flight suit, strutting the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln among real
warriors, and claiming victory.
It was, wrote one commentator, "a masculine drag performance".
Similar posturing went on in the Republican convention before the last
presidential election:
politicians whose own warlike masculinity was nonexistent strove very
effectively to effeminise John Kerry, who really had been a hero.
So we had Cheney, rather obscenely, accusing the Democratic candidate
of wanting to show al-Qaida a "softer side", and muscle-bound Arnold
Schwarzenegger making his famous reference to "girlie-men".
Why do current US political officeholders feel the need for such a
transparent strategy, and why does it seem to work?
To be sure, political power and shows of masculinity have
traditionally gone closely together.
In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in
peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people.
And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals.
Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised
duel and tournament redolent of testosterone.
By way of voice lessons, wearing severe suits and her own aggression,
Margaret Thatcher mastered it (the verb seems appropriate).
Yet the historic fact that power has usually been male scarcely
explains why American politicians now appear to feel an obligation to
try so very hard.
Nor does it explain why Kerry's Purple Heart and Silver Star, won in
combat, didn't win greater electoral dividends.
As far as the latter's failure with the voters was concerned, I
suspect that his allusions to his own heroism in the Democratic
convention ("reporting for duty") struck a false note.
Anyone who has spoken to experienced combat troops knows that they
rarely brag about their exploits.
Strong and silent is the preferred style.
The fact that Kerry was encouraged by his advisers to deviate from
this mode, rather than maintaining a dignified reticence about his
Vietnam record and letting it speak for itself, was yet another aspect
of the Democrats' ineptitude in the last presidential election.
None the less, the tendency of some US voters to dismiss Kerry,
despite all his medals, as "French" - which for Americans, as for
Britons, is often a euphemism for effeminate - and to be impressed by
George Bush's bluster, his wearing of a Stetson, a leather jacket and
cowboy boots on his ranch, and images of him chain-sawing trees,
suggests at the very least a degree of confusion about what does
constitute masculinity.
This is surely one reason why the Republicans - and, indeed, some
Democrats (think of Bill Clinton's busy sexual adventurism) - have
been tempted in recent times to use postures of masculinity to such a
crass degree.
They are not acting this way because Americans possess a strong and
confident cult of the masculine virtues, but rather because many are
anxiously uncertain about just what these virtues are.
__________________________________________________________
"A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a
woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum."
Henry Louis Mencken
Harry
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