The Weekend Eudemon
Riesling Friday night. Yes, it might be more of a girly wine, but that's all right. Eric walked downtown yesterday afternoon to his favorite shop and picked up a couple bottles of wine, including an inexpensive Riesling. He opened it when Mrs. Scheske went swimming, leaving him with the seven and a need for alcohol.
The Riesling was 2003 Rosemount Estates. He can't highly recommend it. It's drier than he likes his Riesling. He wanted a sweet wine last night for some reason, so he was disappointed. But it was inexpensive, so he shouldn't complain. So inexpensive, in fact, that it should've been a hint of what to expect. As should've been its screw-top cap. And the fact that it's available free with a Happy Meal. All right, we exaggerate. It wasn't that bad and, given the price, a fair drink.
We should also mention that we are still feeling our way through the vines. We're not wine experts, far from it, so don't take our recommendations and criticisms too seriously.
If you look to the right, you'll see a first for TDE: advertising. Yes, we've decided to blog for book publishers, and ISI Books is the first. Eric has been a fan of ISI for many years and is delighted that they wanted to advertise on TDE. This arrangement will free up some money and allow us to purchase some long-desired midget porn.
The Punchy Journal: The continuing semi-biographical, semi-factual, semi-humorous, semi-inane, and semi-ribald excerpts from the diary of Nate Brewer, a young man trekking toward middle age in the corn stretches of the Midwest.
. . . Consider this question: What does it mean to be a man today in America?
For a long while, our culture tended to bleed manliness into femininity. Men were told that they should be sensitive and artsy, that it's acceptable to cry, that they should undertake traditionally female roles, that skin care products for men are acceptable, that homosexuals are just like normal men. It was the androgenizing of America.
The response?
Some went for it.
Others rebelled, and set-up the antithesis: a pig that treats women like dirt, wouldn't cry if their mother died, considers only sports and money-making as worthwhile pursuits, is proud about the amount of TV he watches, and views all literature as fag fare unless it contains sex.
The Man Show archetype, in other words.
The media has embraced both, with Pig Man, at this moment, beating Chick Man. Both, however, are still broadly embraced by different segments of our culture.
And there are some segments that embrace facets of each, like professional football players who tout the virtues of skin care lotion. This creature (of media and mass marketing) is called "Metro Man," which is a nice way of calling him an Androgyne. Sometimes he's an Androgyne with big muscles, but that doesn't matter. Big muscles don't take away the feminine any better than cologne takes away the smell of unwashed arm pits. A person with big breasts and a big penis, after all, is still a hermaphrodite, albeit in rather pronounced ways. A person who primps his hair and clothes like a woman is still woman-like, regardless of any manly characteristics he may possess.
And what about men who disdain all camps: the Pigs, the Chicks, and the Androgynes?
We don't hear from them.
But you're about to hear from one of them now. Me.
My virility has been questioned a dozen times in the past ten years for a variety of reasons, like when I once told a group of friends I didn't like pornography. They were literally celebrating it and passing it around, over ten guys and no one objecting. Until me, and I did so as subtly and inoffensively as possible.
They were shocked, or at least highly surprised. They couldn't believe that I'd have any objection. After all, I like beer and sports, therefore I must like porn. In case you missed the implied syllogism, I'll spell it out: All men like porn. Nate is a man. Therefore Nate must like porn. It's an absurd syllogism (its first premise is hopelessly flawed), but one they never questioned.
My virility has been questioned by such men for a variety of reasons: my devotion to my family and tendency to stay home with them on the weekends instead of getting dead drunk at local bars, my tendency to go to bed and get up early (which would be acceptable, if I was rising early to hunt or fish), my tendency to read a lot, my dislike of excessive TV, my taste for wine, to name a handful.
I just happen to live in a geographical area where Pig Man is the dominant type. If I lived in an area where Chick Man dominates, I'm sure I could go through a litany of ways that they'd think I'm a bizarre specimen ("You read fine literature, so how can you be attracted to Happy Days re-runs and Pabst beer?"). . .
But these men [as depicted in magazines like Maxim] have not a hint of any quality that might make them attractive to progressive and mature women. Their world has been vacuumed free of empathy, sensitivity, and sophistication. It is as if millions of American men–many of them well educated–took a look at the lifestyle prescribed by modern feminism and decided, No thanks, we'd rather be pigs. David Brooks, "The Return of the Pig," The Atlantic Monthly, April 2003.
