Obama's spine is diminishing by the minute. It would have taken all of two sentences to point out that Clark was merely stating an obvious point: military service is neither required for, nor is particularly relevant to being president. Even though Clark fell all over himself in his statement drooling about how great a hero McCain is, he was still predictably savaged by the right-wingers with their faux outrage. People need to make this point more strongly so we can start eroding the vacuous military bootlicking that plagues our political discourse:

1. The US has not been involved in a war of strictly national defense since World War II. All subsequent wars (with the possible exception of Korea) are widely acknowledged to be flawed or outright mistaken.

2. We have an all-volunteer military, which means that it is a career choice like any other. For all intents and purposes soldiers are employees of a corporation.

3. It is ridiculous to confer hero status on people who are performing a task that is not constructive, even if those people are risking their lives doing so.

4. Those who argue that soldiers should not be vilified because they are "just doing their jobs" should realize that they should not be lionized for the same reason.

5. Godwin's Law rears its ugly head - if all soldiers are heroes no matter what the larger goal of the war, do we grant the same status to German WWII vets?

Note that none of the above points are necessary to make the same point that Clark made - namely that there is no relation between piloting a helicopter and running a country.

I'm not sure when you went to high school, but I'd guess it would have been in the early 90's when the whole grunge thing was happening, and now we're going through a similar thing with the hipster trend - shaggy hair and stubble are in, and it's even trickled down to the Dane Cook types. But I imagine this study would have produced different results in the 80's, for example. Just a guess.

Are boys not people too? Or do you think that women are the only ones who can be affected and molded by cultural influence? Are you implying that since we live in a male-dominated society, all males are some kind of sinister hive-mind, and thus adolescent and pre-adolescent boys are automatically perpetrators rather than victims?

"Society" is not a single-minded sentient entity, and certainly not one with a particular gendered viewpoint. You seem to be still operating in this turn-of-the century feminist mentality, as if at the highest rungs of society you will find an evil cabal of men plotting to keep half the population down. The reality is that all of us, men and women both, are born ensnared in a world of contradictory signals regarding sex and gender, which conditions the attitudes that we develop growing up.

This is why feminists need to stop interpreting gender relations through the lens of an arms race. A good example is "sex-positive" feminism and the whole "pro-slut" movement, which focuses on women emulating male promiscuity where, unlike any gender traits associated with women which feminists (correctly) point out are contingent and socially conditioned, this shallow hedonism is just assumed to be an essential male characteristic that neither has underlying societal causes nor can be changed. You seem to be making the same assumption in this article.