|
The return of real men By Suzanne Fields THE WASHINGTON TIMES George Bush (the elder) was the kind of guy who would have taken you to the prom (or the debutante ball) and work all evening to please you, even if he knew you'd rather be there with a more exciting someone else. . . . . The only someone else available that year was Mike Dukakis. Enough said. . . . . George W. Bush (the younger) was the prom date to die for. He was the hell-raiser, vain and macho, who could (and no doubt often did) sweep a girl off her feet, even if she knew better than to count on him as a steady. He doesn't have to tell us now about his youthful mistakes. It's pretty obvious what they were. We can believe him when he says that's behind him. He'll probably never want to prove himself by parachuting out of an airplane. . . . . Al Gore, on the other hand, is the prom date Mom and Dad loved. He talked to them about passions that had nothing to do with their daughter -- the Internet, global warming and maybe the prospects for his tobacco crop -- while their daughter fussed one last time with her eyeliner. They even trusted him to extend their daughter's curfew. He was the steady guy they knew would go places. No surprises there. . . . . Historians will always argue whether the times create the man or the man creates the times. But neither George W. or Al Gore are archetypal of their times. They're throwbacks. . . . . Bill Clinton -- baby boomer, draft-dodger, Vietnam protester, and sexual satyr -- epitomized the rebellious and trashy 1960s, in and out of office. That's how he can believe he never did anything wrong. . . . . Al Gore can say with a straight face that the president's White House behavior with Monica was morally challenged. (Now he tells us). George W., by contrast, rebelled the old-fashioned way, sowing wild oats on Saturday night and praying for crop failure on Sunday morning. When he says he made mistakes (he doesn't say, as pols usually do, that "mistakes were made") we're persuaded that the drinking and wenching are out of his system. . . . . Both George W. and Al Gore are refreshing from a moral perspective. Finally, maybe, the social upheavals of the 1960s are slipping behind us. George W. as cowboy follows in an honored history. So does Al Gore as class nerd. . . . . The good news is that neither of them captures the pervasive male image of the moment. If they did, they'd more likely be homosexual, or at least affecting the homosexual style. David Skinner, writing in the Weekly Standard, identifies this newest trend for men and concludes that "the mainstream has gone gay." . . . . Crispy chest hairs on the movie hunks of yesteryear have been replaced by bare chests with skin as smooth as the flesh of girls. You don't have to be gay to affect the style because the man-as-boy image is in. Peter Pan has flown into adulthood without Tinkerbell. What puberty exaggerates, wax obliterates. Depilitation accompanies emasculation. . . . . "Male vanity and the desire to prolong adolescence are becoming mainstream traits, no longer markers of a subculture," writes David Skinner. If the hairless image were confined to homosexuals, we could probably ignore it, but heterosexuals indulge it because it enables them to put off marriage, fatherhood, responsibility. . . . . Against this grain, both George W. and Al G. look like men who groove on being married, men who like their wives. "Family values" isn't just a marketing phrase. We know the families they come from and the families they've created. We believe Barbara Bush when she says of her son as son: "I think we've done good." . . . . George W.'s wife Laura tells Time magazine: "If he wins, it'll be great. If he doesn't, we still have a life." (Hillary would never have said that.) Tipper tells us that Al is funny in private. (Hillary probably wouldn't have said that about her man, either.) . . . . The polls, such as they are, show George W. far ahead of Al Gore. It's much too early to make book, but we can be sure of this much: Hairless these men are not. Back to DA*DI's Home
|