Obama style self invention is a debilitating disease. What a crowd of thumb suckers these thin skinned adonis types must be. Jenning’s daddy should have taken Johnny Cash’s advice and named little Kevin “Sue.”

I am beginning to think that Tano didn’t get a lot of gold stars on his wee-wee chart when he was in day care.

What on earth was that rant about? I just laid out a few facts about the man’s biography in response to a question about same. I didn’t make up the part about trailer parks because I have some deep seated antagonism to them – I mentioned it because it is simply a fact about his upbriniging. Same with the Klan. That is the environment he grew up in. And yes, he is a hero for having emerged from that and become the man he is.

If you could access whatever human decency you may have, instead of
just seeing the world as one big political point-scoring game, you would understand that.

Of course they hate the trailer parks. Some of the greatest modern politicians on the right come from such humble beginings and excelled and thrived.

The fact that some of the greatest come from the humblest, is anethma to them.

‘Gee, did Jennings have a dad??”

His father died when he was 8. He grew up in a trailer park in N. Carolina, surrounded by family members who were Klan members. I don’t think many folks there were conversant with the Greek classics, and they all had rather unambiguous opinions of gays.

I’ll bite. So what?

Let’s see: trailer park, North Carolina, Klan, unambiguous opinions of gays……why didn’t they gut him and drag him around by chains behind their pick-em-ups as they drove from bar to Klan meeting to snake handling church meetings all the time cursing evolution and looking for a black man to stomp?

Looks like brother Jennings slipped through a lucky crack in the floor of Hell and crawled his way up to becoming a missionary for righteousness. He is lucky Bill Clinton didn’t run over him as he was dragging a ten dollar bill through the trailer park fishing for casual sex with a big haired trailer trash woman.

You liberals love the projects but hate the trailer parks. I guess the trailer parks have the people who need to be reeducated to get them up to statist standards.

I don’t understand your argument here. Jennings seems obviously repulsed by this reaction. He is accurately describing the fact that this culture is a significant part of what American youth are exposed to and taught. He is not justifying it or advocating it -quite the contrary.

“That piece linked above clearly indicates that he believes our cultural ideal of masculinity means countenancing such violence.’

“Our cultural ideal”? Thats rather broad. He recounted the cultural ideals that he was exposed to, and that many others are. He certainly did not claim that they were the only things that are ever taught to kids. And he certainly has spent his life being opposed to such notions.

Are you being willfully dense on these matters?

Movies, just about any John Wayne movie (especially The Quiet Man, not the Conqueror though), 300 [stop snickering] and from the east, Kirosawa films (many of which spawned westerns) show those heroic traits.

In Comics, both Steve Rogers and Bruce_Wayne, and Dick Grayson are Men, I suppose Superman also qualifies.

It is striking that Jennings would suggest an adolescent boy could pass on the cultural ideal of masculinity.

Dan, one of the interesting things that comes out of anthropology and sociology classes is learning that there are a lot of “masculinities” that get taught in a culture, by a lot of agents within that culture. Agents like fathers, brothers, teachers, coaches, and religious figures all convey messages about what it means to be a guy. Class and regional differences also impart such messages Even the era a person grows up shapes what message is passed about what it means to male. So yes, an older brother can teach a younger brother a view. There’s nothing surprising in that. If you want to argue should they that’s a different matter.

American males are not brought up to kill our fellows in order to prove our masculinity, but to stand up for ourselves in the face of obloquy and adversity…

Well, he was arguing that when that obloquy is caused by being seen as a fag, violence is a result.

We do have a common view, a common stereotype, that a man is determined, resolute, strong, virile, and stoic (in the modern usage and not the Classical definition.) The antithesis of that view of masculinity — of being wavering, cowardly, weak, effeminate and emotional — is what gays are commonly considered as representing. Being called a fag, being regarded as a fag, being seen by your peers as fag, is being seen as “not a man.” Which is true. It’s a heavy and common insult.

He was writing that piece in reference to the wave of school shooting in the late 90s by straight male students who had their masculinity questioned. He was arguing that it wasn’t surprising how they responded. I think he’s wrong in there, as most males so insulted don’t resort to violence. For whatever reasons, they persevere. It’s the Carneals and Klebolds of the world who snap and kill believing that will “get their masculinity back.”

Had we great access to myth, we might better be able to articulate this masculine ideal.

We have great access to myth — they unfold in our theaters and on our TVs, through our video game boxes, on our holidays and in our churches. We don’t talk about the Classical myths as much anymore, but we are just as steeped in the mythic as the Greeks were. It isn’t a question of having access to myth but rather in better understanding the myths we do have access to, the ideals those myths teach, and how to put those ideals into practice in everyday life.

We haven’t been Greeks for a long time, D.

Very instructive.

His father died when he was 8. He grew up in a trailer park in N. Carolina, surrounded by family members who were Klan members. I don’t think many folks there were conversant with the Greek classics, and they all had rather unambiguous opinions of gays.

But if one is angry and hateful because one’s parent is religious, then of course one’s mind will be closed to any such messages and adolescence is the perfect place to stay for the rest of ones life.

No; Jennings is being criticized for asserting what is pure fantasy.

We need to own up to the fact that our culture teaches boys that being “a man” is the most important thing in life, even if you have to kill someone to prove it.

Again, Tano, you attempt to defend Barack Obama’s support of Truthers like Van Jones and anti-heterosexual bigots like Jennings by whitewashing their statements. While that sort of lie may do wonders for your need to rationalize everything your Barack Obama does as correct, those of us dwelling in the real world of facts are not blinded by such racist beliefs as you hold.

Oh, Adam Baldwin, the life we could have had!

If and when you ever study wider, you will realize that the taming of the adolescent and young-adult male is not only a major issue in the Greek classics, it is probably the fundamental project of all civilizations. Disciplining and focusing the energy of the young men in a society to expend their energies for the positive benefit of the society is what separates civilized societies from the Hobbesian worlds. This has resonance in all political questions, including the ones we deal with today.

There is a reality out there that all of us know, and I strongly suspect that you do to. It may not resonate with your ideals of how the world should be, but it is true nonetheless, and Jennings describes it well.

I particularly like your comment “Had we great access to myth, we might better be able to articulate this masculine ideal.”

And it’s not just the masculine ideal we can understand and appreciate from the myths, but also the nature of love, and humility and sacrifice, and many other elements of the condition of man. Our contemporary common culture has become skeptical of anything that can’t be explained by the scientific method, so myths are considered frivolous and too often pushed to the side. But the great myths contain truths, mystical, and metaphysical truths, that are not “in” the words but “behind” the words. It’s a great loss when we can’t conceive of truth that way.