All these right-wing poseurs! Disgusting! Rush Limbaugh wouldn't recognize "masculinity" if it walked up to him. What they truly seem to admire is schoolyard bullies. Fred Thompson can only be masculine with a script! (Rented a red, pick-up truck for his campaign? Why red? I think we know!) And I have been waiting for years, it seems, for poor Chris Matthews' voice to change. He may hold the record for the longest, sustained puberty in evolutionary history! And his raising his fists as his audience booed him during the Hillary Clinton interview was feeble! While he and Limbaugh have both lost weight, Matthews appears pasty and lame, and Rush, well still flabby, especially around the mouth! Thank you for letting me vent.

Am I the only one who wonders how many of these guys actually have to shave? Rove looks to me like he couldn't grow facial hair if he had to, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn the same is true of Limbaugh and Matthews. It long ago occurred to me that one way to describe the ascendancy of the Shrubbites is "triumph of the neonates."

This might seem like hitting below the belt, but damn, when some guy who looks like an infant keeps nattering about "manhood" I think the possible psychodynamic origins of that conduct are fair game.

You Americans are beginning to petrify us Europeans.

War is dreadful, appalling.

We had it 1939-45, and later in Cyprus, the Balkans

and now "just down the road" in the near-east.

When are you going to THINK about your grotesque "defence"

budget. (Orwell language = Attack budget).

We've had enough of war - and cold war.

George Bush and his pals should go back to their ranches and leave the civilised world to sort out its problems via the UN - without the megalomaniac US.

Hey fetzermillsjr,

Fighting is not immature. Standing up to bullies is not immature. It is the primal calling of being a man. Some neocons try to distort this for their own ends.

I wish there were more guys like you, who are willing to stand up to bullies and not just talk around it.

I hope you get your cage match. Just remember, a tag team means two guys. I want to get my licks in too. I'm half-irish, and all american. And I can hit pretty hard.

I would say that Mr. Matthews' obession (and the whole of media's obsession) with masculinity and smells reveals the shallowness of our culture. Can anyone imagine Germans having this discussion? Give me a break. The world is heading for apocalypse and we are talking about English Leather. We are not voting for American Idol here. We are trying to chose a leader who can wear the mantle of the 'leader of the most powerful nation in the world'. Help us!

PS. We get the leaders we deserve.

Ducat's book sounds like a great one for summer reading - not only the source of world problems but probably the reason half of marriages in the US fail. Couples mainly can't resolve who should be on top. Actually, we've always liked the spooning position-maybe why my marriage has lasted 42 years.

Thanks JLB you're right - my Psych 101 course was a long time ago.

Maybe Tweety can coax Fred Thompson to appear on his show wearing a flight suit. Ecstasy!

I am a Middle-East veteran. I enlisted when I was 17 and got out when I was 21. Chickenhawks incense me. No one who serves on active duty for any amount of time can come out unscathed, in peacetime or war. Serving in the military is a sacrifice for everyone who serves honorably, in years if nothing else. You also have to sacrifice a part of yourself to Mars. You never get that part back.

My worst nightmare was losing one of my guys. I was lucky and never did. I still have nightmares about losing one of them.

I am extraordinarily suspicious of non-veteran politicians and their spokespeople who refer to the politicians' "public service". If they're not veterans, I don't think they have any idea of what service is. You literally surrender your life to the U.S. government for the term of your enlistment. That's sacrifice.

I am opposed to the war in Iraq and have been since it became apparent we were going to invade and I'm a Yellow-Dog Democrat and I was an Arabic linguist in the Navy. So, since they've impugned my patriotism and my party's, I feel compelled to seek redress. My unpatriotic, effeminate, Democratic ass challenges the Republican Manly Men presidential candidates to a no-rules cage match. I'll fight you two at a time. The cage is so you can't run like Bush did on 9/11 and like you all did during Vietnam, except McCain. I'm only 6' 1" and 165 lbs. Also, as a feature attraction I'd like to fight Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly at the same time. And Sean Hannity and Glen Beck. Also, administration mouthpieces Joe Klein and Howard Fineman.

I'd also like to fight Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, because they have the Manliest Mouths among the Manly Men and they're so tough and Manly.

I know it's immature to fight and violence never solves anything, but issuing this challenge is the Manly thing to do, because fighting (war in other words) is Manly in and of itself.

The prize will be another Manly thing. Torture. If any of them can take me out, they get to torture me, in a very Manly way of course. But, if I beat them, I get to torture them until I get the right answers. I have a list started.

1.) What is my drivers license number?

2.) What is the name of the first girl I ever kissed?

3.) Why is there air?

4.) What are the middle two digits of my social security number?

5.)If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Right on, Mr. Greenwald.

Eloquent as usual.

that Maureen Dowd does the same thing as Glenn has pointed out in previous pieces. Hers takes the tack of dissing Dems for being wimps as opposed to fawning over Reps, but it amounts to the same thing.