MAN-ON-MAN BUSH LOVERS

Catching up with all I've missed over the past week, I read with keen interest this post by James Wolcott about the media's fascination with George W. Bush.

I've often pondered the same subject, of why men (Joe Klein, Chris Matthews, and so many others) seem to be so enthralled with the language-and-intellect-challenged Dubya. Do they REALLY think of him as the tough guy they wanna be? A prep school CHEERLEADER who blithely walked away from his cushy Vietnam-war position as a Texas Air National Guard pilot? A man who failed at every business he engaged in and was only recued from obscurity by his family name and political connections? Is it his hard-drinking, drug-enhanced womanizing past that they identify with, or wish they did? Or do they exult in the fact that this ne'er-do-well could ascend to the presidency, thus assuring them that even the bottom-dwellers can succeed given the right circumstances? Do they thrill at his cowboy rhetoric and fancy themselves Lonesome Dove wannabes? I just don't get it. Come on! He doesn't like horses or cattle! (Or is he afraid of them???) His idea of being a tough Texan is clearing deadly brushwood from his property! He's been a fake from the get-go, a macho-speaking, cowardly-acting pretender, and why don't they see that?

Frankly Bush personally repels me, and from my acquaintance among fellow Texans, it seems that far more women than men don't see the attraction either. The women I talk to far and away exceed the number of men I know in deprecating his swagger and sway. We see him (and the men that admire him) as puerile and suspect in their "manliness." The men we admire are thinkers and doers, not just tough-talkers. We are attracted to men (like, famously, Bill Clinton) who actually DO something positive, who LEAD, not those that have to be "handled" and protected from decision-making. And men who swoon over George W., we suspect, have doubts about their own masculinity, and so we question theirs also.

Thank God I have a husband and two sons who despise him as I do. MY men are real men. They think. They pray. And they listen and reconsider. They even, from time to time, admit they're wrong and correct their course.