Some Bad news for Coulter though. People started pointing to her fairly noticeable adams apple as evidence that she might be a man in drag after all. Of course, real women have hair on their face, extremely short hair, and other supposedly masculine traits. So what's so bad about a little adam's apple in her throat? If you want to insult Coulter, refer to her as a nice girl.
A WEENIE BOY SORT OF MAN? But maybe Coulter could be considered a weenie boy kind of man like President Bush, Alberto Gonzales, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, and a lot of other right-wingers Why not? I defined "a political weenie boy" as someone who:
1. Highly valued conventional jock/frat boy/ big man on campus types of masculinity;
2. Could not live that kind of masculinity out of shyness, social maladjustment, lack of athletic ability, or inability to discipline themselves. Rush Limbaugh and George Bush are good examples of guys who valued conventional masculinity but couldn't live it.
3. Embraced the kind of exaggerated manly gestures found in John Wayne Westerns, Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movies, other action movies, violent video games, cop shows, and the like. Unable to live the kind of masculinity they admire, weenie boys adopt the cartoon version of manhood.
4. Engage in a politics of debunking conventional type guys as unmanly and establishing "weeniness" as the normative type of masculinity for politics. In this way, the right-wing worked overtime to debunk BMOC types like Al Gore and John Kerry in favor of archetypical weenie boy George Bush.
By this standard, Ann Coulter could be a weenie boy. I've seen Coulter refer to herself as a "pretty girl" which indicates that she was also into the conventionally pretty guys. More or less unfortunately for Coulter though, she was not a guy and therefore could not be a conventional kind of guy any more than Bush or Limbaugh. They probably wish they had her excuse. Coulter also expressed a fervent admiration for Dirty Harry movies in Godless which indicates that a fondness for exaggerated masculine gestures with very big guns. Finally, Coulter's long "Swift Boat" campaign against liberals and the Democrats can be seen as an effort to establish weenieness as the "real" standard for masculinity.
So, yes! Ann Coulter meets all the standards for weenie boy masculinity. Actually, I think Coulter underestimates the extend that liberals can be weenie boys as much as her. Joe Klein and Chris Matthews are good examples of ridiculous liberal weenie boys. But Coulter is right that the exaggerated machismo of pathetic weenie boys is much more common on the right than the left and I would have to rate her as even more of a weenie boy than Klein and Matthews.
So Coulter's right in a way! She is more of a weenie-boy sort of man than any liberal. That's probably one of the reason why she's such a hero to conservatives. I don't understand why they don't run her for president.
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I don't know why I bother, but Ric Locke did a very good job explaining the difference between the behavior of military heroes and the behavior of John Kerry.
I've never thought of Al Gore as unmasculine but John Kerry simply tried too hard. Tried too hard to portray himself as a war hero (see again Ric's description of true war hero behavior) and tried too hard to be seen doing the manly stuff. He practically shouted "see how manly I am!"
Even Bill Clinton never *tried* to be manly. You simply can't say that of Kerry.
If you've got anything at all going with this "weenie-boy" thing you ought to be able to apply it to those on either side of politics. I suspect that it's just a fun way to engage in name calling toward those you don't like.
I didn't argue that Kerry was a hero. I argued that he was a conventional big man on campus type. He still is. He did all those awkward "manly" things during his campaign because he was battling the stereotype that he was a wimp. Of course, Kerry is much of a guy's guy than George Bush ever was. But the right was very effective in selling the stereotype.
The weenie boy concept accomplishes two things. It explains what kind of "masculinity" many conservative figures try to project and why they are motivated to do so. The weenie boy concept also explains why Democratic politicians have been so confused about how to deal with these manhood issues. Kerry, Gore, John Edwards, and other Democratic politicians have always been more comfortable with themselves as men than pathetic weenie-boys like Bush and Limbaugh. As a result, they were stunned and confused when the right began to challenge them on that score. That's a lot of the reason why the right was so effective in stigmatizing them.
The weenie-boy concept is meant to be explanatory as well as stigmatizing. I believe it's effective at both.
How do you know how comfortable Kerry, Gore or Edwards are with themselves as men?
I suppose your theory explains a lot but it's also dependent on the weirdest assumptions... all Democrat men are comfortable as men and all Republican men are insecure? You're taking all this effort to explain something that isn't even remotely self-evident.
Personally I don't understand what a "big man on campus" type is. Is it even real? I don't think I ever knew any "big men on campus". Not one. I knew a lot of men. Some were athletic. Some were geeks. Some were pretty-boys and some were jerks. Quite a few were future military officers. A whole lot were Engineers. Not a single one was a "big man on campus."
I went to a college that actually had significantly more men than women (rare even back then) and then spent some time in the military.
I've worked with men in environments that were male dominated to the point where men did not modify their behavior for the few women present. It's a subtle thing and I'm convinced that men are not even aware of it, usually. (Oh, they know when they are having a boy's night out and acting up on purpose, but I don't think they are usually aware of it when it's not on purpose.)
Long story short... I know what men acting normally looks like.
I don't recognize anything you describe.
Oh, and if Edwards doesn't know how to deal with the unheard of criticism that he's a "pretty boy" in a manly way... I could help.
And so the idiot-patrol is back! They have one spokesperson now but the message is still the same. "THEY DON'T GET IT AND THEY DON'T WANT TO GET IT." I pity them.
I enjoyed your explanation of the "weenie-boy" phenomenon. I DO get it.
I must add, we are in good company. Radio host Randi Rhodes said the other day that she'd like to "kick Ann Coulter in the nuts." LOL. I can't help but agree.
Thanks to Synova for not playing the same 20 questions game as his/her friends. But Synova has to make up her mind. Either the weenie-boy concept does explain things or it doesn't.
Of course you enjoyed it, todd! It's fun to read quasi-intellectual Bush bashing and Coulter slams.
You say that you get it. Can you rephrase in your own words or explain or expand on it? How lovely is your pity. How delicate. But you can only pity while no connection between human beings is made.
You, like Ric, don't actually respond. This is not a conversation. And here I thought women were supposed to be so great at conversation, unlike men. To have a conversation both sides have to try to get the other side.
Ric doesn't want to. Right-wing thinking is a cancer. I think that Left-wing thinking is often interesting. If this wasn't interesting I wouldn't have checked back. What is masculinity?
A rather large group of people can not relate to this weenie-boy idea. My life does not contain the concept of "big man on campus." I honestly do not know what attributes typify a "big man on campus."
I don't think I'm that unusual. And what use are sociological constructions that are meaningless to such a huge segment of the population? They might be useful to describe a person's own unique micro-climate, but if a person is going to say something meaningful about the whole world, the people unlike themselves ought to fit into it... somehow.
I do understand that it's *fun* to be all clever and snarky about Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, but it's not particularly relevant beyond the warm fuzzies received from those of like minds. Who already have like minds.
No one need be persuaded because everyone already agrees.
ric, it explains things quite well so long as actual reality doesn't come into play.
You don't *like* these particular people so you have decided that they have gender inadequacy issues. You don't know that they do. You just like to think that they do. And then taking this assumption that you assume is correct, that all these right-wingers are consumed with inadequacy and wishing they were a real man like that popular fellow with the letter jacket and stingray convertible that Daddy bought him to take to Yale, and that explains why they act in ways that you don't like.
There's no data.
How can I say that you've managed to explain *anything* when there is no data, no objective anything to *be* explained?
As just about everyone else said, before your conclusions can be discussed, your assumptions have to be supported.
Why would I waste my time trying to help a syncophantic right-winger who probably takes all his/her "arguments" straight from the RNC website? If I endeavored to prove that I'm right you'd still tear it apart with more pointless rhetoric. There is a saying about casting one's pearls before swine. I have no interest in so doing. I do however, still pity you.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you again!
Taunt me?? LOL. Give it your best shot. I don't even know you but i already percieve a most unpleasent personality. You certainly have every right to speak on a third grade level but leave the intellectual analysis to those of us who know something about that of which we speak and about that which you pretend to know. Here are the facts about Ms. Coulter, FACTS, not opinions. Ann Coulter is merely the latest in a dubious tradition of self-promoters who have discovered that if you say enough outrageous things, you can get yourself an opportunity to say them on television. She is a sideshow attraction, not the main event. Her only significance in the war between Left and Right is diverting attention to herself, and away from the machinations of the real players in the game. She excels in this role. She has a willingness to shoot her mouth off that make her a natural on television. If she were witty instead of just mean-spirited and nasty, maybe she could be the Right's answer to Randi Rhodes. But in her book Slander, she adds a dangerous new twist. In her book she has included, and heavily publicized, 780 or so footnotes, in the hope that their very heft will buy her extremism a credibility not shared by the books of, say, Sean Hannity, or (on the Left) Michael Moore or Al Franken. This symbol of accuracy and scholarship is meant to reduce skepticism, tricking people into thinking that her rants are factually-based rants. Originally, I thought I would try to plow through the whole book, but I decided ir would be more fun to sit and watch my faucet drip so I changed my mind. I started with Chapter 2 because on the C-SPAN TV show Booknotes, Ms. Coulter said that Chapter 2 is her favorite. This is coincidence, but for me a happy one. If I can convince you that her favorite chapter is largely unsupported by her footnotes, then perhaps you will be skeptical of her other chapters as well. As I am. I haven't even read most of the book. Part of Chapter 1 and all of Chapter 2. I browsed here and there and I realized very quickly that this book was a complete waste of time and energy; just like its author. Why bother to read more? If you're served a bad meal, you don't have to eat the whole thing to verify it's bad. Slander is similar. All she has to offer is uninformed hate. I hear enough of that where I am. Who would want more of the same?
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