Sensitive man - Bill Clinton's image as a sensitive male - Column

How does a weeping, empathizing President drop bombs? The same way porcupines mate: carefully. Updating this old joke, Colin Powell called the damage Clinton inflicted on Baghdad "collateral"; Al Gore called it proportionate," but the best rationale came from Pat Schroeder, who whined earnestly, "It shows he's sensitive."

Clinton's sensitivity is usually attributed to the pacifist Sixties, but anti-war protestors yelled and broke things. He's actually a product of the feminist Seventies, when the "humanized" male was ordered to report for duty.

The Seventies buzzword was "unisex," the canard was "Tenderness is strength," and the book was The Liberated Man, by Warren Farrell, who advocated the "Human Pronoun" - tis, ter, tes - and worse, used it.

Sporting long hair, bell bottoms, and ties as wide as a woman's scarf, Sensitive Man lived in perpetual suspense: What would feminists demand next, and would he be able to give it to them? He learned to say "I'm into women" without laughing; followed "burning bed" murder cases and came out in favor of equal suttee; and trained himself to be receptive, emotional, tearful, supportive, nurturing, and passive.

Letting women undress him was the latest thing for a while, and I helped it along in one of my Cosmopolitan articles, extolling the practice while keeping my real thoughts to myself: When a man undresses a woman he feels like a rogue; when a woman undresses a man she feels like an undertaker. Ergo, he feels like a corpse.

Like the political prisoner he was, the Seventies male made public confessions. "My name is Sensitive Man and I used to be a male chauvinist," he would say, describing the macho sins he committed until the day he saw the light, giving it plenty of schmaltz and piling on the cliches. "I stood there ... suddenly I realized. ... It was as if I had become two people."

To show how sexually secure he was, he circulated among the women at parties saying, "I'm impotent." It made him seem soft, as it were. It also helped him acquire new bedmates without going to the trouble of seducing them: with so many newly minted feminists eager to practice their sexual aggression, the impotent man became, incredibly, a real catch.

Along the same line, Sensitive Man confessed that he used Johnson's Baby Shampoo and shaved under his arms. "Deodorant works better that way," he said with a shrug. "Why shouldn't a man shave under his arms? Of course, some men might feel threatened by it, but I don't worry about being |effeminate.'" To prove it, he cried.

This is the man feminism destroyed. There are millions like him, and one is in the White House.

Clinton supporters who defend his sensitive antics succeed only in bestowing the kiss of death. In a Washington Post column, "What's So Bad about Zigzagging?" Judy Mann praised him for not being John Wayne," credited him with being "secure enough that he can change his mind," thanked him for violating "the Western, male, rationalist code of behavior," and predicted that he will "redefine our expectations of men."

In a syndicated feature headlined "Clinton Takes His Style Cues from the Feminine," National Public Radio commentator Steven D. Stark writes, "It should not be surprising that a Democrat is feminizing the Presidency" because Democrats are the "mommy party." Feminization also explains the Comeback Kid phenomenon; "because women are usually perceived as softer and less powerful than men, negative attacks often end up only creating sympathy for them. The same may be true for Clinton."

Can it get worse? Yes. Stark concludes: "The good news is that we finally have a feminine leader. The bad news, of course, is that she's a man."

These "compliments" are nothing but warmed-over Seventies bromides. Time's Margaret Carlson dredged up the tritest one when she effused that the example of the Billary proves that "it takes a solid, secure man to marry a strong woman."

Oh, please. Clinton is Sensitive Man. He is also one of those peevish, overwrought males that Southerners call an "old maid in britches." Familiar literary portraits of the type include Scarlett O'Hara's jumpy second husband, Frank Kennedy, constantly clawing his beard. Another is Waldo Lydecker in Vera Caspary's Laura. Clifton Webb played him as an urbane switchblade in the movie but in the book he's a captious hysteric: Bill Clinton with a porcelain collection.

Sensitive Man has bad nerves because his politics keep him in a perpetual state of guilt and his passivity keeps him in a perpetual state of sexual anxiety. Stir in the temperament of an old maid in britches and you've got double trouble. "Stress, probably," said the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's Paul Greenberg in his assessment of Clinton's "tearful over-reaction" to Brit Hume's Rose Garden question, adding cryptically: he betrays signs of a political crack-up of Scott Fitzgerald dimensions."

To hell with Sensitive Man; I'll take Rush Limbaugh. The Vain Brain is male ego personified, a Jove among Apollos, a laughing cavalier, a welcome daily reminder of what real masculinity sounds like. May he thrive.

COPYRIGHT 1993 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group