Men on Board

You must have seen it, this photo of a couple dozen conservative muck-a-mucks making decisions on women's health. That the entirely-male gathering is determining policy about women is a fact too lathered in irony not to notice. But then, just for the record, the Republicans now in power mowed down lefty opposition in the last election cycle by flaming opposition to Obamacare and a forthright refusal to kowtow to political correctness already laying waste this once-proud nation.

The truth is, they don't mind Trump's talk about women with Billy Bush. Who doesn't talk that way when they're out with the boys? President Donald Trump is not, nor has he ever been p.c. Praise the Lord. All-white, all-male = all-American. This is Steve King's world. He's just off the frame somewhere.

At least they're not p.c., and neither is the photo. That's why a couple of days ago it flashed on screens all over the country. It's just an update on the inside cover of an old box of Dutch Masters, a century or three or later. 

Okay, it's not quite the same. Those bearded Dutchmen are only grading panatellas. 

No matter, because at least that shot up top is not p.c., right? It doesn't get down on its knees for feminists. So there.

It hurts to admit it, but I'm dangerously close to 70 and no longer a virile young buck. I have a pair of gloves in camo, but that's all--wait a minute, and a pajama bottom I got for Christmas from my son. The State of Iowa's bally-hooed flurry of political activity on guns has no effect on me, although I do have three BB guns down here in the basement. The truth is, all of them belong to my grandkids. For the most part, I'm not greatly affected by the President's endless macho swagger either, but it does make me laugh. I think the VP's photo op up top of the page is hilarious.

Think of it reversed. Imagine a room full of formally-attired women, elbows up around a congressional-sized table, all of them seriously discussing a healthy sin tax on Viagra and all other medications designed to end erectile dysfunction. Imagine that. There they sit, two dozen powerful women talking about men's private parts.

It's not pretty. Most men would shrink away at the very thought. Or get mad.

In this morning's New York Times, Jill Filipovic makes the outrageous claim--okay, in the Trump era, nothing is outrageous--that that photo at the top of this page is actually political strategy because Trumpians--both in their male and female varieties--like what they see--MEN, IN CHARGE. After all, Ms. Filipovic says, that picture isn't the first such political photograph. There exists a whole album of impressive shots of white males exercising power. Here's another.

"Mr. Trump promised he would make America great again, a slogan that included the implicit pledge to return white men to their place of historic supremacy," Filipovic writes. "And that is precisely what these photos show. The same kind of men who have been in charge of the United States since its founding, so very proud of themselves for trying to ax the rights that make it possible for women to chart their own futures — and to compete with men."

Me? I don't believe her. I'm just not convinced that the same white men who couldn't pass health care are all that smart. They don't put stock in diversity because what they covet is excellence, not quotas; and excellence generally, as Steven King so strongly maintains, is is most often found in a white face, and a pair of big meaty hands. You know.

But Jill Filipovic does offer up an interesting thought, and she may be right: it's a conspiracy of sorts. Photographs like those all-male gatherings telegraph omnipotence. Look at 'em. Nobody here needs Cialis. When they go home on weekends, they all get some good old r-and-r in matching bath tubs with their women.

Trust that guy in the middle there. He knows how to handle women. He's had all kinds of experience.