“First Dude” Todd Palin Was Heavily Involved in Wife’s Decisions

Under Alaska’s public records law, 1,20o emails exchanged between Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd Palin, were disclosed to MSNBC.  Various shady dealings aside, investigative journalist Bill Dedman says the emails “provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006.”  According to the report, “first dude” Mr. Palin assisted in decisions regarding appointments, contract negotiations, and a whole host of sensitive matters passing through his wife’s office. 

To my knowledge, this is the first time a female politician’s husband has been singled out like this.  Spousal involvement has been commonplace, of course, but the fact that Todd Palin is a husband conjures up the specter of conspiracy rather than a feeling of mere “support.”  Perhaps it has something to do with the Palins’ earlier attempt to cast him as a down-home kind of man who just liked to take care of the kids and go snowmobiling.  In any case, my sense is that the public will be rather intolerant of political partnering with future “first dudes.”

… with Liberty and Hotness for All

The I-Slept-through-My-Gender-Studies-Class Award for 2010 has its first nominee, Us magazine, which in its 18 January 2010 issue presented a picture of Nicole Kidman looking serious and as flawless as ever.  Its tag line:

“Nicole Kidman visited the United Nations in NYC Jan. 4 to give a speech about women’s rights.  For more Hot Pics, turn to page 14.”

Country Boys

Hugh Campbell, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, and Margaret Finney, eds.  Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. 322+ix.

In the age of corporate identities, urban men often look to rural men as possessing something primeval and masculine.  Whether the frontiersman or the farmer, the cowboy or the co-op producer, something about the wilderness remains in these men.  There seems something rooted to a masculine essence. 

Country Boys contests these powerful images with gritty, provocative sociological studies.  In truth, they say, rural men have their masculine identity socially constructed every bit as much as the city man.  Fifteen essays, from various authors and covering country life from America to Ireland to New Zealand, examine and challenge the gendered values held in these environments.  While its essays are of inconsistent quality, Country Boys is overall a very useful volume for men’s studies. 

As the introductory essay recognizes, men of the fields and forests and outdoors uphold “the symbolic power of the venerable rural myth of rugged individualism” (2).  They exude a sense of toughness, structure and discipline.  They gravitate towards a rather patriarchal order.  Because rural psycho-social organizations erect firm boundaries and expectations, men in these environments sometimes have a hard time challenging norms or responding to dramatic shifts in cultural climate.  There is often a subtle but ubiquitous enforcement of conservative, white, heterosexual lifestyles.  Many of the essays in this volume illustrate the force of rural hegemony. 

The several studies on rural men’s bodies are, I think, the strongest contributions.  Will H. Courtenay writes about the health effects of manly codes, cataloguing compelling statistics about these men’s injuries, illnesses and early deaths.  Jo Little’s contribution explores different ways the male body tends to be portrayed, such as naked calendars and homely singles ads, and how each is intended to steer people away from “scary sexualities” back to the valuation of the family.  The gem of Country Boys is probably David Bell’s “Cowboy Love,” which provides four vastly different portraits of rural homosexualities.  Without sounding bitter or didactic, Bell describes the perilous identities of these men, also explaining how we cannot conflate the idyllic “homosexual rural” with the actual “rural homosexual.”  The essay is all that much more impressive since it was written before the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon.

Missing from the volume is a look into religion among men of the country.  (How it is possible to speak of cohesive societies and cohesive masculinities without religious ties, I do not know.)  Also omitted are studies about migrant workers.  Sometimes lacking is a counterbalancing sense of appreciation about rural men’s decisions, and how their (increasingly unpopular) values help facilitate their often happy lives.  These points aside, Country Boys can be said to contain important studies.  I recommend it as a library resource and a book for upper division sociology classes.

Open Forum: Is Avatar Pushing Traditional Sex Roles?

Take one part Star Wars, one part The Matrix, add a dash of the Smurfs – and voila, you have Avatar.  What would sound like an improbable sci-fi blockbuster has become the smash hit of the winter, and rightly so.  The plot line is engaging and the screen effects are unrivalled.  It is certainly worth your $11.00 to see it in the theater. 

The movie’s agenda regarding native cultures and the environment notwithstanding, what do you all think about the way it portrays roles for men and women?  Does the Na’vi tribe strike you as patriarchal or equalitarian?  Does the movie embrace traditional views of gender, or does it suggest something more progressive?

Christians Who Drink Beer

Historians will look back on the years 2000-20 someday and call it the Second Age of Muscular Christianity.  Quote me on it.  Let me unpack at least one aspect of this phenomenon: beer-drinking Christian men.

A decade ago a seminarian explained to me how there are three types of PKs (pastors’ kids) in the world: PK-A, the obedient child, PK-B, the outright rebellious child, and PK-C, the child who knows how to be rebellious but chooses to live mostly (mostly) within the bounds of the PK-A lifestyle, that is, Christians Who Drink Beer.  For him the mark of cultural engagement and anti-legalistic assertion involved whether or not one went to the pub.  The coincidence is almost too uncanny: the same rule is now applying to the other PKs, Promise Keepers.

Now in 2010 the pattern seems to true, especially for Protestant men.  Former “nice boys” and Promise Keepers attendees, they now look to buck the restraint associated with Victorian morality and fundamentalistic codes.  The new Muscular Christians are showing their rough side… by throwing down a couple of cold ones.  Preferably stouts.  For instance, hipster pastor Mark Driscoll writes in Radical Reformission how light beer is a sin – a claim that could be taken figuratively until one considers that he helps to sponsor a brewing club at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.   Meanwhile, John Eldredge, a light beer hater himself, encourages men to disregard legalistic conventions and follow their wild heart (or stomach?).  Attempts to follow this injunction in the beer department have led to some funny results.

Not that Muscular Christians encourage drunkenness.  They do not.  Rather, a more regal form of hold-your-liquor masculinity applies here.  Don’t drink too much.  And no matter how much beer you imbibe, don’t let it compromise your self-will.  Remember, we’re PK-Cs here.

One final example.  A friend who works for Campus Crusade in Utah tells me that drinking beer has become a standard way for Evangelical men to distinguish themselves from the Mormons.  The teetotalling LDS guys don’t dare assert themselves that way, and pretty much have the squeaky-clean masculine archetype all tied up.  Which leaves wide open a handy, malty lacuna for Protestants. 

Being set apart has never been such a happy ordeal.

Whose Depression?

On American television this month WebMD.com has been targeting depression sufferers.  Their commercial features a middle-aged woman who describes a difficult situation: her marriage had been struggling, her husband wasn’t communicating with her, he threatened to leave, she begged him to stay, that she would do anything; he left anyway.  The commercial then switches to the WebMD web site, which features a quiz to see whether you are depressed.  The person (not pictured) clicks on “excessive crying.”  The narrator encourages viewers to log on in order to determine whether one is suffering from depression.

The interesting thing about this commercial is that it is unclear all along exactly who they are describing and who they are targeting.  In this unfortunate situation, is it the woman who is depressed?  Or is the commercial saying that her husband, acting wholly irrational, is the one depressed?  After watching it several times, it seems the commercial is targeting the former, viz., the unfortunate woman who is left to fend for herself after being abandoned by a man.  She is sad, no doubt, but he manifests the more acute signs of emotional distress and perhaps mental illness.  Yet the clicking of the “excessive crying” box in the commercial seems to have reference to her, not her despondent husband. 

As someone who has been in men’s support groups for over a decade, I have had exposure to numerous cases of male depression.  It isn’t nearly so obvious as one would hope.  Men tend to be less willing to describe themselves at being depressed, and tend to attach it less to communal stresses, a recent study by Stacy De Coster found (“Depression and Law Violation: Gendered Responses to Gendered Stresses,” Sociological Perspectives [summer 2005]).  Men will, however, attend more to “agentic stresses,” that is, stresses caused by others calling into question their own personal competency.  Men respond not through overt depression; they break the law. 

If WebMD really wanted to help people who are unaware of their condition, they would have made some kind of effort to underscore the fact that it is the husband who is probably suffering from chronic depression.   As it is, this commercial (like most advertisements advertising for depression through stereotypical displays of sadness) will find themselves reaching women far more than men.

Coming to Die Like a Man

Yesterday, November 29, marked the season of Advent, the Christian holiday in which one anticipates the coming of the Messiah.  Because it looks forward to Jesus Christ’s final coming to deliver the world and raise the dead, Advent calls for a time of lament, grief, prophecy, and hope.  Because Advent is able to remember the time leading up to the first appearance of the Messiah, it is also a season of memory, promise, and joy. 

For Christian tradition, the Christmas season does not begin until December 25.  Accordingly, my absolute favorite album for December is Behold the Lamb of God by Andrew Peterson.  Most of the songs on the album are Advent songs, recalling the (broken) covenants of the Old Testament, and how they converge in two insignificant Jews named Mary and Joseph, and ultimately in an impoverished little boy named Jesus.  The whole album is bookended with a wonderful chorus based out of Philippians 2:

Sing out with joy for the brave little boy
Who was God, but He made Himself nothing
Well, He gave up His pride and He came here to die like a man

God is brave! – when men are cowards.  God is humble! - when men have spurned the covenant with their pride.  The mystery of God’s incarnation in this man Jesus Christ blows apart every category, including what it means to act “like a man.”

Facial Hair in the News (November 2009)

Yesterday Visanthe Shiancoe of the Minnesota Vikings chalked up the extension of coach Brad Childress’s contract to his new beard.  And his leadership skills in producing an 8-1 record thus far, of course.

In an attempt to comfort readers of Us Magazine worried about Brad Pitt, Dr. Alan Peterkin assured them that Pitt’s beard is simply a developmental issue that will resolve itself.  “Most men growing facial hair around his age are being ironic. It’s a bit of a wink of the eye; ‘I’m not taking this too seriously and nor should you.’”

In an unrelated development, glittery pop starlet Mariah Carey has played a frumpy social worker in the upcoming move, Precious.  ”I had to lose all vanity,’’ Carey said. “I had to change my demeanor, my inside, layers of who I am, to become that woman.’’  Most shocking of all was her willingness to sport a mini moustache, which some working on the set claimed was genuine.  Carey has vehemently denied the accusation, as has her lawyer.

Pheasant Hunting and Fatherhood

It was interesting to see my son’s reaction to a pheasant I had shot.  There it was: a fully-feathered, colorful bird, wrapped in an orange Hy-Vee plastic bag.  My son, who has seen animals only in the context of dog parks and zoos, literally took several steps back.  He wasn’t recoiling in horror so much as discomfort with something totally alien.  After I made a joke and started laughing, he reluctantly took a feather offered to him.

Admittedly, I’m not sure how to teach my son about hunting.  I believe it is a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment.  I also believe that hunting, if not taught properly, can promote a cult of violence.  How, in a world where hunting isn’t necessary for survival, does a father teach his son to enjoy the sport without justifying it through bloodlust?

On Reformation, Karl Barth, and Manly Theologizing

Happy Reformation Day, for those of you delivered from the concurrent secularized-Catholic holiday.

Perhaps the greatest modern reformer was Karl Barth (d. 1968), whose protest against natural theology and insistence upon Christ-centered Christianity was, in its own way, a prolonged hammering of theses against church doors.  I find it interesting the way that one commentator describes Barth’s work:

To some, his writing appears to be an attempt to create a world of theological reality by sheer power of language, convincing by overwhelming rather than demonstrating.  To others, it seems an act of wilful defiance of modernity – doing at inordinate length what the Enlightenment had disallowed: talking of God with fluency and delight.  To others, again, the cumulative power of Barth’s writing can seem an exercise in unbridled – male – forcefulness, its repetitious and boundless energy wearing down the reader into submission  (John Webster, Barth [London: Continuum, 2000], 52).

Indeed, Barth’s Church Dogmatics are “overwhelming,” “inordinate,” “unbridled” and “repetitious” even as they are “fluent” and filled with delight.  I think there is something to the claim that Barth’s manful energies were more often than not expressed quantitatively. 

This avalanche method is nothing new, considering the frustrations of the pope with the 16th century reformers.  With the advent of the printing press, it was impossible to burn books and pamphlets fast enough to keep them at bay.  Even John Calvin, himself unwanting for words, griped that the Lutheran theologians were simply writing too much.  Which leads us back to Barth, whose demanding style feels much like a submission hold.  Moreover, like the more radical Zwingli, in him there is something unrelentingly iconoclastic, a systematic breaking of rival avenues and false gods. 

Yet I wonder if there is also something simple in the midst of Barth’s style, the economy of concepts and the summons to purity in Church Dogmatics, that also has something forceful, even masculine, about it.  Barth writes about Martin Luther’s program, which, marked by a certain theological restraint that he describes as “manly, healthy, and simple” (Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 102-3).  Luther restrains himself from excessive complexity.  He restrains himself from the violence of pan-iconoclasm.  Like a real man, his extrovertive force is matched by an internal gravity.  The same could be said of Barth.  Not that this sense of restraint hardly makes his writings any less dominant and terrifying.  There is much to be lauded – and feared – in this reformational manliness.