But I started feeling itchy with some of the things Klein says. Take these comments:
No way Webb could ever pass for effete; he's a guy who always looks as if he's five minutes from his next altercation.and
Kerry, whom I've known for many years, was always a different, more awkward guy in public than he was with his Vietnam pals -- and, according to one of his closest Vietnam pals, he'd even stopped being loose with them in private in recent years: "We lost him when he married Teresa."Eek! Girls have cooties! Well, Klein doesn't put it quite in those words. But there it is.
Of course Klein is not alone with these feelings. Joan Walsh at Salon points out that other commentators were also relieved to finally find someone that matched their idea of a manly Democrat :
Then, after the speech, on various news shows, Democratic presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards represented the party admirably, each of them striking a balance between respecting the bipartisan ritual of the evening -- yes, we want to get some work done and we'll act like the president does too -- while making clear they would continue to fight Bush hard on Iraq. Webb was the night's standout, but his performance was also a tribute to the new and frankly unfamiliar P.R. savvy of Democratic leaders, who were smart enough to choose the military veteran to rebut the president.Like I said: Cooties are scary. And girls have them.Or so I thought. It turned out that on television, there was a zero-sum game of political credit for Democrats, so Webb's win meant that others lost -- and mainly that seemed to mean liberals and women, especially liberal women like Nancy Pelosi. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews and Mike Barnicle were tripping over themselves to laud the manly Webb, and thank their lucky stars that the Dems hadn't picked somebody who'd have used his or her time to fulminate over gay marriage or other effete concerns. "He didn't mention a woman's right to choose. He didn't talk about civil unions," Matthews gushed. Barnicle called Webb "a member of the Democratic Party of my youth, of your youth, Chris," and went on to mention a list of men, men, men.
--J. Goodrich
