MACHISMO FLAILING

Stephen J. Ducat on W.’s Texan manhood in Buzzflash: “I think a complex combination of factors determines this. Not all cultures and all historical periods evidence this kind of femiphobia. But we’re seeing a number of factors, not the least of which is a kind of backlash against feminism and the ability of the Republicans to really define the words we use. There is no greater power than the power to define. If you can determine how people use language, you really are able to determine how they think. If you can fill the word liberal with the meaning that you want it to have, which nowadays is weak, feminine, cowardly, so much so that even liberals want to run away from it, then you’ve won an enormous battle for control. That sort of framing, as George Lakoff calls it, the kind of linguistic hegemony on the right, has accomplished a lot. Fears have always been there, but certain historical events have brought them into the foreground. I think the defeat of the United States in Vietnam played a major factor. I’m sure you’re familiar with the term “Vietnam syndrome.” I think one way of reading the Vietnam syndrome is as a condition of wounded masculinity…”


and


ROSENBAUM OVERRATES CROWELL, if cleverly: “Yes! Graham Greene is the country-and-western songwriter of sentimental Anglo-Catholicism…”