It's more that they not be harassed for playing with girl toys.

What the article suggests is that boys be given the same freedom as girls to experiment with things that our culture assigns to the opposite gender.

Traits and behaviors that we think of as "masculine" or "feminine" are really human traits that everyone has to varying degrees. To say that men cannot be nurturing, for instance, or that women cannot be aggressive is to deny reality.

I never liked it when people tried to stuff me into a little box marked "feminine" and chop off all of the bits that didn't quite fit. It's just as outrageous to stuff men into a little box marked "masculine" and chop off all the bits that don't quite fit.

It's a revisionist version of history meant to undercut Democratic criticism of how far the party has fallen since the days of Abraham Lincoln -- especially now that Barack Obama is in serious contention for the Democratic presidential nomination. The GOP is still the "party of Lincoln," Santorum says; it's those eeeevil Democrats who are the real racists. Those latte-swilling elitists are racists because they support multiculturalism, civil rights, and voting rights, and all of these things are bad because of their impact on the most oppressed group of people in human history, American white men. Oh, and the success of Condoleeza Rice proves that rank-and-file Republicans aren't racist, so there. This despite the Southern strategy, despite evidence that racist Democrats fled the party after LBJ pushed civil rights and the Great Society, despite Willie Horton and similarly racist attack ads, despite GOP policies that are specifically designed to hurt poor minority people, despite coded appeals to racism like the infamous "welfare queens" in their Cadillacs, and despite the "macaca" moment. A side benefit of his line of rhetoric is to make Republicans feel comfortable about their party's racist element.

Lil' Ricky isn't the only conservative bloviator who's flogging this particular talking point. He's just the most obnoxious.

Americans are just a bunch of big sissies? He's on to something there, but I'm afraid he lacked the tools to handle it. We are sissies in the sense that as a people, we've been taught to be afraid of everything. I've often thought that our political views have become based on anxiety and fear, especially since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Conservatives in particular have made a science out of invoking fear of "the other" (terrorists, Muslims, gays, minorities, liberals, Hillary Clinton, atheists, you name it) while indulging in displays of chest-thumping bravado worthy of the alpha males in a baboon troop. And surely the neocons who avoided anything remotely resembling military service themselves but are just peachy with sending our armed forces out on a series of doomed imperialist misadventures are the ultimate sissies, not to mention their cheerleaders in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. And then there are the blatant attempts by corporations to make us anxious in order to manipulate us into buying stuff we don't need. It's no wonder that we've become a nation of chickenshits.

As it is, though, I don't get any sense that Strausbaugh wants to explore how our national unease and paranoia have been stoked and exploited. In the interview, he just comes across as a slightly cleaned up shock jock, invoking outrage rather than any kind of coherent discussion of how our fears and anxieties interact with our myths about manhood. The term "sissy" also seems just a tad misogynistic to me, too, as if the worst fate in the world is to be compared to a woman.

People play games because they're fun and mentally stimulating, not out of some kind of pathetic neo-Napoleon complex. Board gaming in particular is a social activity; interacting with other players is half the fun. And if you're upset about people using games to bring meaning to their lame, dreary lives, that criticism goes triple for movies, literature, music, TV, sports, gambling, and the entire entertainment industrial complex. There's nothing wrong with a little escapism, as long as it's kept in perspective. Also, it's better to work out one's feelings of aggression harmlessly by playing games than by taking them out on other people.

The problem comes when people lose their sense of perspective and start believing that games represent reality. War isn't a video game, or even a war game. I think everyone wants to feel like they belong to something larger than themselves. That's fine; working towards some kind of larger positive goal is a great way to bring meaning to one's life. But along with it comes the danger of self-righteousness, and that's as seductive and addicting as drugs.

This is where I think the problem lies -- those who confuse entertainment with reality and are OD'ing on their own group's self-righteousness.