U.S. could use more girlie men (B.Y.O.B.B.)

St. Petersburg Times ^ | August 20, 2006 | ROBYN E. BLUMNER

[Lorianne]

Deadwood is one of my favorite programs. Set in a South Dakota gold mining camp in the 1870s, it grittily explores the way human beings organize themselves when consigned to a lawless territory that attracts miscreants, varmints and vultures.

A recent episode had an especially insightful moment when all the leaders of the camp were called to an important meeting without an invitation proffered to the female owner of the camp's only bank. Alma Garret could have all the money in the world, but because she has two X chromosomes (a distinction more graphically described in the show), she wasn't about to have a voice in camp affairs.

The writers were right. Testosterone-laden Deadwood is not a welcome place for women. When the law is determined by the number of gunslingers on your side, women don't flourish. But neither do men, certainly not men of learning or ability. Which is why Deadwood, as its name suggests, is doomed.

I mention this because I've been feeling lately that the world has suddenly gone all male - Deadwood-male to be exact. And this is not a good sign for civilization.

Although I consider myself a feminist, I'm not the man-hating kind. Men have clearly been at the forefront of nearly all the great advances in science, medicine and humanist thought.

We understand the physical forces of the world thanks to Isaac Newton and the natural ones thanks to Charles Darwin. There wouldn't have been an Enlightenment without John Locke or Voltaire. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela remind us that compassion and a taste for social justice are found in both sexes.

I also believe that men and women are more similar than they are different.

Still, those who would glorify violence and the law of the streets are thought of as masculine for a reason. Dirty Harry never said, Let's talk about it.

Fighting terrorism has steeped us in a social psychology that is palpably different from our 50-year battle with the Soviet bear. There is something more aggressively mano a mano about fighting Islamic extremists. And that difference has been exploited by our leaders to justify knocking down the rules of civilization, such as the Geneva Conventions, as being too effete. The claim is we must respond to the terrorists' lack of humanity by throwing out our own standards. The result is a vicious cycle of ever-deepening depravity (Let's talk secret CIA prisons).

Yet this dirty, street-fighting paradigm has fit perfectly with George Bush's swaggering cowboy approach to geopolitics. Bush likes his enemies in black hats and hiding in the brush. For Bush, justice gets meted out when the good guys take matters into their own hands and don't wait for lawyers with fancy words like "due process."

But what you never see is that when the hero rides into the sunset, the real work of rebuilding a society is left behind.

The Deadwood hero leaves bodies in the thoroughfare, while the reality hero tries to prevent the bloodshed in the first place. The Deadwood hero is a vigilante, while the reality hero understands the inherent value of a society dictated by the rule of law. The Deadwood hero is impulsive, aggressive and macho, while the reality hero is a rational consensus-builder with an intelligent plan of action.

Under a curtain of fear from terrorism, we have been manipulated into thinking that our national security depends on casting our lot with a Deadwood hero, when in fact it lies with the other.

International affairs professor Gary Bertsch at the University of Georgia - he is also director of the Center for International Trade and Security - puts it forthrightly: "The Bush administration has relied on hard power (militarism) rather than diplomacy (soft power) and it has been very costly. It is reshaping the view that the rest of the world has of the United States as a responsible power."

Bertsch says it is in our national interest to put much more emphasis on dialogue, give and take and negotiation over military dominance. Otherwise, he warns, our allies will soon no longer regard the United States as a model to follow.

Deadwood societies are anti-intellectual havens of selfishness and triumphalism, where warfare and violence are extolled and the feminine ethos of cooperation, understanding and forbearance are disparaged as weak. There is little doubt that many Muslim subgroups fit this mold. Their men would rather shoot guns at ancient enemies than build a modern society. But it is also true that our nation has adopted more of this aspect under Bush than we would like to admit.

Almost nothing could be more damaging to our future prosperity or security. A Deadwood society will never foster positive social change or human advancement. Its focus on force will evoke more violence. Its contempt for intellectuals will silence reason. And if we continue to inch down this road, our fate will be just as bleak as that of the residents of that muddy street in that grimy town in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

[durasell]

I became fascinated with him several years ago. The writing is, well, other worldly. He wasn't some guy churning out hack work ala Max Brand (aka Frederick Faust).

At a cocktail party once I asked a person who knew the genre about as well as anyone alive at the time if he was gay. Her reply was that he might have been at one time, but was way far beyond that by the time he was an adult.

[Sentis]

Having read alot about Howard and having relatives who knew him there is very little chance he was gay. That's one of the charges that really pissed off His ex lover and the reason she wrote "The Whole Wide World". Remember he killed himself at 30 and dated Ms Price for several years during his twenties. He did kill himself upon his mother's death but he told people for years that was exactly what he was going to do even saying he was going to blow his brains out. His reason was he could not bear the thought of growing old and infirm.

[durasell]

The person I spoke to said he was "beyond that" meaning that he had pretty much sunk into his own world. The same charges of being gay were brought against Hoover, which were also false.

[dsc]

"The same charges of being gay were brought against Hoover, which were also false."

When Russia opened records to public scrutiny following the fall of the USSR, it was proved that the KGB was the source of those false rumors.

[durasell]

Right and some woman in the U.S. who was mad at him for some obscure reason.

[pepperdog]

I don't think she really loves anything. And that's a big part of her problem. She can "love" Deadwood, but she doesn't like what it represents. She is not able to commit to really liking anything, let alone loving it. She's too busy trying to determine if her status as a feminist is being threatened, ignored, usurped or in any way endangered, and she'll decide what endangered means. It's not easy to be a perpetually dissatisfied feminist.

[durasell]

She just strikes me as a fool.

[pepperdog]

Oh undoubtedly, I didn't mean to imply that she was anything more.

[JohnnyZ]

you will find the most elegant language combined with the most intelligent writing ever seen on a moving screen.

I must have seen a different show called Deadwood.

[eddie willers]

I must have seen a different show called Deadwood.

You saw the surface of the ocean and didn't realized there was more beneath the waves.

[JohnnyZ]

You saw the surface of the ocean and didn't realized there was more beneath the waves.

One man's ocean is another man's ... um, chamber pot.

I'm almost amused by the childish "it's really deep ... you just don't see it!" that kids have been telling their parents about their latest stupid favorite show for years and years.

What you revere as elegant language (gag me!) I regard as several orders of magnitude more stupid and contrived than that of any Randolph Scott film.

Al Swearengen: Wave a penny under the Jew's nose; if they got living breath in them, brings them right around.

Wow. That's deep.

Al Swearengen: Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or f-ing beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back.

Wow. Profound.

[eddie willers]

No....I am not coming at it in a childish "it's so deep you just don't get it" way.

Far from it.

I had heard about Deadwood, but didn't subscribe to HBO.
I sell Dish Network for a living and took a customer's DVR satellite receiver in trade.

I wanted to add another to my system so I could record one show while watching another. After hooking it up, I noticed a couple of Deadwood episodes were still on the hard drive.

My jaw dropped when I heard every other word was a cuss word and thought "Has the American Public sunk so low as to think this is good? This is nothing but shock for shocks sake... absolutely worthless!"

But I noticed a face I recognized (Larry...as in Larry, Darryl and Darryl of "Newhart" fame) and so I though I'd catch a bit of him. (He plays E.B. Farnum, Mayor and Proprietor of a hotel)....a weaselly suck up who REALLY combines Victorian/Edwardian elegance of speech enmeshed with gutter language. But it is woven like a Hieronymous Bosch inside a Jan Vermeer.

A strange beauty...but a beauty nonetheless.

After starting to get a glimpse of what was really inside Deadwood (it's a story of how civilization and order climbs out of chaos and discord) I bought the boxed DVD sets.

After watching...in order...the 23 episodes leading up to last year's finale, I remarked (to no one) that that episode, "Boy The Earth Talks to", was, with the exception of a few great musical pieces, the finest hour of ART I had ever had the deep down pleasure to experience.

I am sure you have been advised when recommended a great, but slow starting book, to "get through the first 100 pages..." and was later glad you did.

I implore you to rent the first three episodes on DVD. I think you'll then go on to many more hours of pleasure.

[JohnnyZ]

After starting to get a glimpse of what was really inside Deadwood (it's a story of how civilization and order climbs out of chaos and discord)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

I implore you to rent the first three episodes on DVD. I think you'll then go on to many more hours of pleasure.

I think I'll watch my four seasons of Farscape another dozen times first, Grasshopper.

And then set Street Fighter on perpetual replay ....

Personally I cannot think of a book that was boring the first 100 pages and then got good.

Really, though, I can't remember a worse hour and a half of TV than Deadwood. Possibly the recent episode of All My Children I saw at the dentist. But that was only half an hour. Of the thousands of shows and movies filmed that I haven't seen, the one that, from what I've seen so far, is terrible is gonna be at the bottom of the heap with The O.C. and Teletubbies.

[Cincinatus]

The speech in Deadwood is anachronistic; it's written to give the viewer the same emotional impact that actual western boomtown speech would have had. True western obscenity would be much more blasphemous, less scatological, and sound quaint to our modern ears. Yet it would have sounded scandalous to a Victorian listener. The writers are trying to convey the same emotional impact to our current jaded sensibilities as people would have had back then.

[Caipirabob]

International affairs professor Gary Bertsch at the University of Georgia - he is also director of the Center for International Trade and Security - puts it forthrightly: "The Bush administration has relied on hard power (militarism) rather than diplomacy (soft power) and it has been very costly. It is reshaping the view that the rest of the world has of the United States as a responsible power."

When it comes to matters of intelligence, manhood, warfare and how to beat an enemy, I find myself strangely compelled to put my faith in the fighter pilot rather than some effeminate, emasculated professor who embraces the same ideology of surrender as Jimmah Carter.

He is also co-founder and co-director of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, an annual award (presented in recent years to President Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Mikhail Gorbachev, UN High Commissioner Sadako Ogata, and President Vaclav Havel).

OK, so this assclown is affiliated with the same school of thought as that raving idiot Carter. 'Nuff said...

[strider44]

She needs to read some Heinlein:

"Violence never solves anything."
"So? I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that "violence never solves anything" I would advise to conjure the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury could be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pidgeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

"A 'Pacifist Male' is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described 'pacifists' are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes they hoist the Jolly Roger."

I could go on and on...

[eddie willers]

Personally I cannot think of a book that was boring the first 100 pages and then got good.

Ok....I now know where you stand. Instant gratification takes too long.

[strider44]

"Personally I cannot think of a book that was boring the first 100 pages and then got good."

Ok....I now know where you stand. Instant gratification takes too long.

What the hell are you talking about? I think you're replying to the wrong person. I never wrote the statement in quotes above.

[eddie willers]

What the hell are you talking about? I think you're replying to the wrong person. I never wrote the statement in quotes above.

Yikes!

You are correct....my apologies.

[mngalt]

Thanks, that makes perfect sense. But, it still puts me off in that I just can't get past a western "dude" calling someone a "c........r". It doesn't ring true and the cognitive dissonance it creates in my never-nuanced and simplistically linear mind prohibits me from taking it seriously. I'm just not a very good consumer of media generated constructs and out of phase perceptions.