Harvey Mansfield has some kind of a nutty anti-Obama rant in the Weekly Standard this week. I didn’t read it, but seeing it reminded me of this, my all-time favorite interview, about Mansfield’s book “Manliness”; I like the bizarre questions like “Can terrorists be manly” and the fact that it finishes with a discussion of bespoke clothes, cigars, and scotch. I have nothing special to say about it, but I thought you might enjoy reading it too.
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madmommy
Why even ask such a silly question? Do men really sit around thinking about how “manly” they are? Personally, I don’t want to compete with a man for mirror time.
Martin
@madmommy: Only Republican men, apparently.
DougJ
@madmommy:
The whole thing is so openly “faculty club in the 1920s” and simultaneously homoerotic — not that there’s necessarily anything contradictory about that.
MikeJ
Are terrorists to be treated as soldiers, chivalrous combatants on the field of honor, or as common street thugs?
rob!
Man, Republicans must REALLY be insecure about the size of the President’s package. I think they’ve seen Blazing Saddles a few too many times.
Porco Rosso
Manley liberals? Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart not manly enough?
El Cid
Terrorists are to be treated just like you deal with 7 foot tall effeminate Persians, some of whom have saws for hands: you face them down with a force of tanned, bare-chested, leather-thong wearing handsome Greek warriors…
DougJ
I also like that an article about manliness opens with this:
rootless_e
@El Cid: Don’t you need to credit The Corner for that cut&paste?
williamc
Sometimes I wonder if the fellas that dwell on the totems of masculinity know that the majority of gay dudes that I have ever encountered would fit their scotch-drinking, risk-taking, money-making definition of “manly men”; indeed, Sully himself, if you had never heard him go on about how queer he is, could be one of those types…besides his propensity for super fag-outs on a pretty regular basis…
Porco Rosso
The thought of Mansfield talking about manly manliness makes my Willie tingle.
El Cid
@rootless_e: How would I know? I would never encounter that dark quasar star of tidal force gravity dumbness without it being cited by liberal bloggers intent on watching it.
madmommy
@Martin:
Ugh. Very squicky.
Mike Kay
Let me get this straight: A career professor at Harvard, of all places, who has never served in the military, even when he had the chance to kill commies in North Korea, is lecturing people on “manliness”!?!
El Cid
George W. Bush: TANG = Manly.
John Kerry: ‘Nam = Wimp.
williamc
@DougJ:
DougJ, sounds like this dude is about to hookup with the guy he met getting off the elevator to me.
Nothing says ‘manly’ like a happy ending after a workout from the fella that was spotting you while you worked out your abs…
rootless_e
@Mike Kay: His citation style is rugged, if you get my drift.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
Maybe cuz the author of that article looks like an old lesbian.
ETA: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
de stijl
One man’s “terrorist” is another man’s
“freedom fighter”totally heterosexual, not at all self-hating homosexual, absolutely not power-bottom, masturbatory fantasy.Mike Kay
The ugliest woman who has ever lived Ayn Rand
Mark S.
Shorter Harvey Mansfield:
Also, can the Weekly Standard ever get rid of the shitty artist they’ve been employing for the last twenty years?
beltane
@Mike Kay: Ayn Rand looks like an old man trying to look like an old lesbian.
Mike Kay
I would bet a lot of dough that Harvard Yard’s Professor
ManlyMansfield owns more library cards than firearms.beltane
@Cat Lady: The author of the article looks like an elderly lesbian former tennis pro. Like Stefi Graf if she were older and lesbier.
Cat Lady
@beltane:
Ha Ha. Close, but more Martina than Steffi. Ha Ha.
Martina would kick his lame “manly” ass.
beltane
@Mark S.: Everything about the Weekly Standard is shitty, so why shouldn’t their resident artist also be shitty. It would be tragic for a talented artist to toil away for such a shitty endeavor.
ChristianPinko
This is relevant to your interests.
Th Republic of Stupidity
@Mark S.:
Geez… sounds like Harve is channeling his “inner B.O.B.” here…
Mark S.
That’s as far as I got.
Shouldn’t America’s premier political philosopher be able to hold his own with Stephen Colbert?
Dials set to Stupid
Great interview. So that’s what conservative gay porn sounds like…
I kept waiting for van Horrick to talk about Mansfield “taking” him, overcoming his futile attempts at resistance. After all, who could hold out forever against such a man…
Amy
This conclusion is bizarre.
Mansfield buys into the idea that health care legislation threatens liberty. Yet having the security of having health coverage leads to more liberty. The person in an unfulfilling job that has coverage can leave the job to start a business or can take another job IF health care is a right. Rights do not undermine liberty, they promote them.
Cheryl from Maryland
I guess the Weekly Standard is deeply tied into this year’s Super Bowl commercials and their concern with manliness.
Th Republic of Stupidity
@El Cid:
You forgot the part about “their well-oiled bodies glistening in the sun”… or something to that effect…
Mike Kay
Unfortunately, Steffi had a real ayran nose (Seereinhard heydrich), but she had a banging body.
http://1stserve.com/images/steffi.jpg
http://sports.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/steffi_graf5.jpg
Th Republic of Stupidity
@Dials set to Stupid:
Nothing about the scent of his aftershave?
The cut of his jib?
The graceful, panther-like sway of his body?
(… it goes to eleven, man… )
Mike Kay
Unfortunately, Steffi had a real ayran nose (See reinhard heydrich), but she had a banging body.
http://1stserve.com/images/steffi.jpg
http://sports.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/steffi_graf5.jpg
madmommy
@Dials set to Stupid:
Ugh. Sounds like a bad Harlequin romance.
Jason Bylinowski
A lot of these people REALLY REALLY are secretly gay, aren’t they? I imagined the entire interview as some kind of latent seduction.
btw, an enthusiastic hello from Fluville. My entire family came down with something akin to dysentery and it’s been a hellish couple of days. We tried sooooo hard to isolate each other and I was cleaning and washing hands and yadda yadda. It was all about as useful as a one-armed trapeze artist with an itchy butt. Yeah I said it. Anyway, cherish your good health.
Dr. Squid
I love scotch. Scotchy scotch scotch.
beltane
@Amy: That’s not the type of liberty he is referring to. His concept of liberty involves the freedom of the employer to profit from employees who are too insecure to ponder leaving their job or starting their own business. Liberty for the little people implies less liberty for the rich and powerful.
JimPortlandOR
one can almost see/hear Mansfield in his one and only pair of jeans (A&F, of course) saying to his significant other: “do these make my ass look fat?”
madmommy
@Jason Bylinowski:
That is no fun. Been there. You can douse the entire house in Lysol and still not kill all the funk. Thankfully it will pass in a few days.
valdivia
According to Mansfield the Great Defenders of Liberty for ever and ever are the Republicans, because Democrats hate liberty you see? And if he is the premier political philosopher of this country I am fucking cosmonaut.
Martin
Wow, talk about the poster child of ĂŒber-liberal, intellectual, ivy-league, university professors. Something must be done about these people before wholesome, red-blooded American values are lost forever!
rootless_e
What is it in human beings that makes some of them love progress more than liberty and makes others love liberty more than progress? ———
this has more than a little manly echo of Wizard of Oz.
Courage! What makes a King out of a slave?
Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave?
Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?
What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot?
What have they got that I ain’t got?
All Four
Courage!
JGabriel
Speaking of manly men, this is interesting: The Chronicle (via DKos) is reporting that the judge in the Prop 8 case is gay.
We can expect the wingers to make an issue of it. I’m wondering though, whether the Prop 8 lawyers and clients their will.
I mean, what would be their basis? Raising the issue seems rather like complaining about a black judge hearing a civil rights case. It’s a complaint that highlights the bigotry of your cause. Ironic, how that happens.
.
jeffreyw
@JimPortlandOR:
Ahem…
Martin
@JGabriel: Activist judges! Legislating from the bench!
jeffreyw
Finally fixed my connection problem with the google, flushed the dns cache.
Do you know how hard it is to look shit up without google? had to use bing…shudder.
rootless_e
@valdivia: I thought Thomas Sowell was america’s greatest living philosopher – according to a certain washed out playwright. Aha, maybe “living” is the key modifier.
Harvard surely has a lot of idjits on staff. I like the evangelical in the law school who thought Bush was Lincoln reborn in Human Form.
Brick Oven Bill
Stalin labeled Trotsky to be a âterroristâ. Leon had a very active love life. If Rachel was surrounded by âterroristsâ, instead of the men of MSNBC, perhaps she would no longer be a lesbian.
Martin
@Brick Oven Bill: You proposing to suicide bomb her gay away, BOB?
Mark S.
BOB, if you were surrounded by the men of the Bush Administration, perhaps you would no longer be a heterosexual.
TR
Every time I see the name “Harvey Mansfield” I confuse it with “Jackie Harvey.”
Finally reading Mansfield, it seems that’s a trade up.
Martin
@Mark S.: What makes you think he’s a heterosexual?
Jibeaux
Obviously we need some sort of “rough men” a la Erick the guy who hasn’t figured you can get a legal name change to something less douchey for 200 bucks joke here, but I can’t quite figure it out. One of you big, strong, glistening BJers wanna help a girl out?
Tattoosydney
@Martin:
BoB just wants to be able to imagine the men of MSNBC getting all sweaty together, but has to imagine a woman in the middle to make it all “not-gay” …
It’s kind of like Top Gun, except with an insane, teabagging, confused pizza chef instead of Tom Cruise.
pj
Gingrich just lied on The Daily Show. He said Richard Reid was given Miranda rights because he is an American citizen. He’s a British citizen. Stewart didn’t know and let him get away with it.
jeffreyw
Joe Shit: I wanna change my name.
Judge: I can understand that. What to?
Joe Shit: Bill, so god damn tired of everyone askin “Hey Joe, whadayaknow”
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
Geez… if I didn’t know better…
***droll pause…***
… I’d say you were channeling your “inner Harvey Mansfield”…
SiubhanDuinne
That interview is hysfuckinterical and hifuckinlarious. I needed the laugh. Thanks!
Jibeaux
Ok, holy shit, I just read it. Are you supposed to giggle uncontrollably throughout? Because by about the twelfth utterance of “manly”, I just couldn’t hold back any more.
scav
and the latte-sipping lectern-lecturing cowboy of masculinity rode off into the sunset.
“Who was that bespoke masked man?”
J. Michael Neal
@Dr. Squid:
Real men drink bourbon. Or warm gin with a human hair in it.
Mike Kay
@Brick Oven Bill:
Perhaps if Larry Craig urinated in the ladies room he wouldn’t have been arrested for being a toe-tapper.
Perhaps if Lynn Cheney hadn’t writtern her lesbian love novels her daughter would have turned out straight.
Perhaps if Ronald Reagan had been more manly his son wouldn’t have turned into a ballet dancer.
Omnes Omnibus
@J. Michael Neal:
Real men drink whatever they want to drink, except pink squirrels.
Tyro
My grandfather faced down fascist occupiers of his town, kept his family fed through a war, started making wise investments within a few years of coming to the USA, and only once he turned 90 did he stop slaughtering sheep by hand but was still planning to open a small business while tending to his garden and his livestock. And he didn’t drink scotch, wear bespoke suits, or smoke cigars, no doubt because he considered that sort of thing to be a little too “fancy” and wasteful.
Making a suit is manly. Buying a suit? Any idiot with money lying around can do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike Kay:
What about Rahm?
Mike Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Exactly, if Reagan had been more manly, Rahm would’t bought a tutu.
rootless_e
@Mike Kay: It was part of a Mossad plot.
Mike Kay
@Tattoosydney:
Or the Top Gun men’s room underwear scene btn Cruise and Tom Skerritt — now that’s what I call “Highway to the Danger Zone”
SiubhanDuinne
@Cat Lady #18
Those links have had me howling and sobbing with mirth for the past fifteen minutes. I’m still wiping away tears of glee and uttering happy little moans.
I’m afraid I enjoyed it all a bit too much. Something very bad is going to happen to me in my next life, isn’t it?
The Republic of Stupidity
@Tyro:
Truthfully, I have nothing against good Scotch…
Any article of men’s clothing made out of seersucker, I avoid like the plague… along w/ anything pink…
Tyro
Republic of Stupidity, I don’t have anything against a good scotch or nice suits, either. But I don’t go around talking about how cultivating these tastes is “manly.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Tyro: Isn’t Manly just a beach?
J. Michael Neal
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought he was a defensive lineman with literacy problems.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Tyro:
Nor does any sane, self-respecting person I know… male or female… talk about telegraphing your insecurities…
A friend of mine’s girlfriend bought him a 30 yr old bottle of Scotch for Christmas a couple of years ago. Told me it cost about $300 when he gave me a taste one night.
Talk about nice… very ‘peaty’… went down oh so smooth.. ’bout 30 sec to min later, got this pleasant burning sensation in my chest.
Hiram Taine
I’m reminded of Robin William’s rant about alcohol from A Night at the Met wherein he says this..
Tax Analyst
@Hiram Taine:
fixt.
Tax Analyst
So being totally gay is Harvey “Manly” Mansfield’s definition of “Manliness”?
OK, now I’ve got it…(roll a “Men on Film” skit segment from “In Living Colour”).
I give that “Three Snaps”
J. Michael Neal
@Hiram Taine: I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. Didn’t beer commercials used to be funny?
FlipYrWhig
@Dials set to Stupid:
FTFY.
de stijl
Manly, yes, but I like it too.
(Never in my life would I have ever predicted that I would use the same stupid quote from a decades old Irish Spring commercial twice in the same month).
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=33951&cpage=3#comment-1567631
Mike Kay
@J. Michael Neal:
all time funniest beer commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDaIOWsBNFQ
Chuck Butcher
To maintain some illusion of fairness I read both articles, well half of Mansfield’s WS one. I have to admit that I’ve seldom had quite that much dissonance going on in my mind – short of a long time ago and some very illegal substances. It is difficult to simultaneously maintain the urge to break into explosive laughter and foaming fury and complete bafflement.
I’d like to thank you (or hit you) for providing this experience. If this is the top of the conservative thinking…well they’ve got real problems and they’re not named Obama.
aimai
Tonight we take Faculty Tea in Hell!
aimai
Cheryl from Maryland
I gave up on the WSJ interview after all of the blather about honor being a gender linked trait and feminism being bad. Another conservative douche who wishes for the days when he was top dog with no hard work.
Svensker
@El Cid:
Ha ha ha. Win. And thank you.
PurpleGirl
@Th Republic of Stupidity:
LOL. Thanks for the laugh.
flukebucket
Just posting. nothing to see here. now let’s see if I can get to the main page.
Mackenzie
Just posting in hopes of main page updates.