Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401250003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Margie Fisher Editorial Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now, before I'm clobbered with hate calls and letter bombs from Lake Wobegon, let me stress that I don't think Keillor is a sexist Neanderthal - a description that might indeed apply to another best-selling author and radio personality, Howard Stern. I'm a fan of Keillor's, have ticket in hand and can't wait till he brings his show, "Prairie Home Companion," to Roanoke next month. But I was surprised at the misogynous undertones in his latest book, "The Book of Guys."
Oh, the book is hilarious. I doubt whether any woman could read it without laughing aloud at some of the wonderful characterizations of both sexes.
In it, though, Keillor comes down firmly on the side of paranoid white males who believe they've been ambushed by feminist stormtroopers intent on wiping robust manhood from the face of the Earth. Almost certainly it will only escalate the latest ludicrous war between the sexes, which is being fought for the high ground of nonpareil victim status.victim nonpareil.
In this war of stockpiled grievances, Keillor launches Scud missiles for modern "guys," who, to hear him tell it, want only to please women, be loved and respected by women, but, hard as they try, can never satisfy that castrating lot.
"Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome," a state wherein all guys must try "to be Mr. O.K., All-Rite, the man who can bake a cherry pie, go play basketball, come home, make melon balls and whip up a great souffle, converse easily about intimate matters, participate in recreational weeping, laugh, hug, be vulnerable, be passionate in a skillful way, and the next day go off and lift them bales into that barge and tote it. A guy who women consider Acceptable," he writes in the introduction to "The Book of Guys."
"Back when our gender was running on all eight cylinders, women died for the love of us. ... Now women watch us and monitor our conversation for signs of bad attitude, they grade us daily, and, boys, we are in the wrong class. ... [W]e try to become caring men, good husbands, great fathers, good citizens, despite the fact that guys are fundamentally unfaithful. A monogamous man is like a bear riding a bicycle; he can be trained to do it but he would rather be in the woods, doing what bears do. Nevertheless, we learn to ride that bicycle for the sake of women, and we ride it darned well, considering. ... [T]hen, with no warning, we wake up one morning stricken with middle age, full of loneliness, dumb, in pain. Our work is useless, our vocation is lost, and nobody cares about us at all. ... In despair, we go do something spectacularly dumb, like run away with Amber the cocktail waitress, and suddenly all the women in our life look at us with unmitigated disgust."
Awwww, poor guys. Made wimps of by women; abused and oppressed by women. Never mind that white males are still America's most-privileged class.
As Newsweek said, in its "White Male Paranoia" cover story last March: "White males make up just 39.2 percent of the population, yet they account for 82.5 percent of the Forbes 400 (folks worth at least $265 million), 77 percent of Congress, 92 percent of state governors, 70 percent of tenured college faculty, almost 90 percent of daily-newspaper editors, 77 percent of TV news directors. They dominate just about everything but NOW and the NAACP; even in the NBA, most of the head coaches and general managers are white guys. So now they want underdog status, too, and the moral clout that comes with victimhood?"
Darn right, and, according to Keillor, they deserve it - especially married white males. In one of his folksy stories of guys, there is a conversation between Don Giovanni and Figaro that goes like this:
"[A] married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage, that is less than marvelous and meaningful."
Awwww, poor guys. No wonder - as in the chapter on "The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus," who is "the god of wine and whoopee" - middle-age married guys, getting paunchy and finding their hair going thin, must turn for comfort to sweet, young nymphs who will ask nothing of them, who will simply look at them adoringly after love-making and say, "Oh, wow."
In the story of Winthrop Thorpe Tortuga, Keillor makes clear that it is only after shoddy treatment by women that white men turn mean-minded and sexist. Tortuga, expected to accept a love affair his wife is having with another man, writes a letter to the National Organization for Women:
```Dear ladies, I see you've got your t--- in a wringer about so-called sexual harassment in the workplace - well, if it's too hot in the office, why not try the kitchen? The country took a wrong turn when American women decided to farm out their babies to day care and go to work so they could live the yuppie life. Result: millions of workers we don't need who file lawsuits if you lay a hand on their shoulder, plus a generation of children with no moms, and society paying the price for years to come. Somebody ought to slap some sense into you broads.'''
I fully expect, of course, that at least one white male who has read "The Book of Guys" will contact me to say:
"You idiot! You just don't get it it! Typical feminist! No sense of humor! Keillor wasn't defending guys, wasn't joining them in their white male malaise. He was lampooning 'em for being such crybabies! He was making a strong case that men need women more than women need men. Why, he says right there on page 21: '[Women] can't take over the world fast enough for me .... Let them run everything. .... They should take over business and government and manage society and finance and let guys be artists and hoboes. .... Women can rule the world, fine, but we need them to love us again, or else it's no good.'"
Oh, I got it all right. Great joke. Except Keillor uses it to push white-male buttons of hostility, resentment, pathos and f+ifearo, and these don't bode well for loving, trusting relationships between men and women, for an end to this lose/lose war.
Men may say, "Back at ya'! Women started the hostilities!" I could argue that till I'm blue in the face - but, instead, how about a cease-fire? Maybe we could start all over again, give up our victimhood, get back to our toddlerhood where we played and got along well together, were often best friends. Maybe Toys-R-Us would give us new playthings if we'd turn in our guns.
by CNB