After God cast Lucifer and his followers into darkness, all the fallen angels came straggling together on the plains of hell — to recriminate, to console themselves and to discuss their new identities as devils. It may be time for men to hold a convention for the same purpose. Let all men be summoned to a gathering of the masculine tribes, like a jamboree of the Indian nations in Montana long ago — a Pandaemonium of the patriarchy, a sweat lodge of the Granphalloon, Le Tout Guyim: as if the entire male audience of the Super Bowl had been vacuumed through 100 million television tubes and reassembled in one vast bass- and baritone- and tenor-buzzing hive. In would gather young and old, warriors and elders, turbulent adolescents, the sleek and paunchy middle-aged, the venerable and wheezing. Lawyers and truckers, body builders, Senators from Oregon, good husbands and wife beaters, Spur Posse mouth breathers, waiters, neurosurgeons, garbagemen and nerds, Tailhookers beastly and Kennedys innumerable, Bly drummers, sweet guys and feel-copping clerics, politicians, pillars of rectitude, forced-entry brutes, girlymen, stockbrokers, philosophers, sales reps, homeless ruins, ex-wife- drained alimoners, gangsta rappers, J. Crew preppies and gunrack bubbas, family-values Bobs and Herbs, whirlpooling cretins, introverts, Fundamentalists, jocks, spazzes, fatboys and hunks and delicate blossoms, biologists, astronauts, alkies, Buddhist meditators, joggers, homeboys, bankers, skinheads, you few loathsome Lecters and Dahmerites, you libertarians, deer hunters, anchormen, bureaucrats, convicts, bleeding hearts, bikers, femsymps and harassers, Rotarians and punks. Welcome, overmortgaged yuppie. Welcome, beery lout in the gimme hat . Welcome, chunky Limbaugh ranter. Welcome, Mr. Justice Thomas. It is time to talk. We must make an examination of conscience. They are saying terrible things about us. Are they true? Masculinity is in disrepute. Men have become the Germans of gender. Are we really as awful as they say we are? Uproar, cheers, gestures of fists upraised and twirling, chorus of “Har! Har! Har!,” here and there a wagonmaster’s drawn-out John Wayne “Yo-o-o-o-o- o!” Gentlemen: We meet at a moment when the prestige of maleness is in decline. Outbreak of mock sobbing, men sawing at imaginary violins. In a sidelong and subliminal way, men have become the Evil Empire, or, anyway, the ancien regime. We are “They,” “Them,” “the Enemy.” The “manly” virtues remain admirable only by being quietly reassigned to women — to Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton, say. Hiiiisssssssssss! Other manly traits, of the noxious-slob variety are ascribed to fraternity boys, the Senate Judiciary Committee and males in general. People come in two models: Women and Men .
