Reply #6: Well, maybe not gay [View All]

[scottxyz]

I don't know anything about Brooks except this essay. And I guess *I* too should be careful of seeing "girly men" at every turn.

There is a certain type of gay guy (I call them "Abercrombie & Fitch" types) for whom the quintessential definition of manliness is those (usually WASPy) athletes they worshipped when they were back in college. Clean-limbed rosy-cheeked preppy boys from good New England stock on an Ivy League varsity team.... There are other types of manliness - such as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps - but preppy-worshippers just don't have eyes for that kind of hardscrabble manliness, they only worship patricians.

I just get a weird vibe when a guy talks so much about "virility". Brooks does seem to obsess a bit on his strange definition of manliness and it does seem strange that he rates poseur Bush as manly - a cheerleader at Andover who muddled through Yale and the rest of his life on the legacy affirmative-action program and did a victory dance on an aircraft carrier in butch drag - but of course that doesn't necessarily mean Brooks is a gay preppy-worshipper. I do find it odd that Brooks sees a pampered AWOL weakling like Bush as being so tough - when there is another school of thought that sees Bush as born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Perhaps that's what he's trying to do here - perhaps he's afraid of Dean, and he's trying to taint him with the "rich spoiled brat" meme more properly attributed to Bush.