I Could If I Were French: With the right accent, a guy can get away with anything.

The Weekly Standard ^ | July 6, 2004 | Larry Miller

[quidnunc]

My wife just got a new dishwasher for us. She didn't tell me, she just got it. I discovered this the other day when I came home from work and saw it, but it was difficult to learn any more at the moment, since she was in the living room with her best friend, Ilana, planning a party at our house that weekend for 25-or-so of the Little League parents. I didn't know about this, either.

"Oh, you'll love it," she said with a wave of her hand, and turned back to Ilana, who was animatedly saying something like, "I think the pasta station should go in the playroom."

And I remember chewing this over and thinking, "You know, there's a lot I disagree with about Arab society, but, on the whole, you've got to admire the way they treat their women."

By the way, I think that's how the whole thing started over there. Some Saudi prince came home, saw new drapes in the tent, and snapped. "Okay, that's it. Let's have your driver's license."

Now, of course, no one sane has anything but contempt for the type of guys who refuse to allow their alleged loved ones any place in the world except behind walls. But there is something to the idea that American men have gone far too far the other way for the last 30 years, and have become marginalized and superfluous objects of scorn.

Commercials, TV shows, and movies almost always portray the father as a moron, a bumpkin, an out-of-touch dodo. An idiot. I feel I have more than a little bit of special knowledge, even responsibility about this, since I have played those characters. A lot. I'm paid for it, too, which probably makes me part of another profession: the oldest.

I don't know when we lost it, I just know that we have, and by we, I mean American men, and by American men, I mean me. Because I don't think this kind of drugged, fugue-state, hairless, eunuch-y complacence exists in quite the same way around the world.

-snip-

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

I think Larry's sleeping on the couch tonight...

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP!

[draoi]

Vive la différence! Cherchez les femmes...

[Captainpaintball]

Larry Miller is a darned good writer. I fear that there is an inverse relationship between his appearances in The Weekly Standard, and his appearances in Hollywood productions. And I bet he doesn't really care at this point.

[spokeshave]

if you don't like the dishwasher.....haul it to the range and dispatch it to dishwaher heaven with a couple of 0.5 BMG rounds.

[Jaysun]

"My wife just got a new dishwasher for us. She didn't tell me, she just got it. I discovered this the other day when I came home from work and saw it..."

The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. My wife got a new dishwasher. I came home from work and discovered the new dishwasher in the kitchen. He was a Mexican and he was drinking one of my beers from the fridge...

[ETERNAL WARMING]

But there is something to the idea that American men have gone far too far the other way for the last 30 years, and have become marginalized and superfluous objects of scorn.

Wow, Larry. Get a grip. It's just a dishwasher. And for that you empathize with Arab treatment of women?

[foolscap]

Men with French accents make me want to gag. Now a guy with smooth southern accent that's another story. I should leave Oregon and move to the south. Well, maybe not. I'd probably just get myself in trouble :)

[Fraulein]

Lay a little Rimbaud on them and its "Last Tango in Paris" in an instant

Any self-respecting woman who could herself quote Rimbaud would of course find such overtures obvious, romantic, and sappy, and would simply be revelling in the disabuse.

[Fraulein]

"American men have gone far too far the other way for the last 30 years, and have become marginalized and superfluous objects of scorn."

I think the word he is looking for is 'castrated.'

[Fraulein]

"I don't know when we lost it, I just know that we have, and by we, I mean American men, and by American men, I mean me."

Again, castrated. Freud could have a heyday here!