The fact that you think “the bigger problem today isn’t the few like Jindal who perform unwarranted exorcisms, it’s the increasing number of Christians who deny the existence of things like demons, Hell, and the devil entirely” distresses me almost as much as the homophobia you’ve shown in other posts, and points out, yet again, the danger of allowing the pro-theocracy, anti-science freaks of American society to ever gain the sort of prominence that they had under the Bush regime, a regime that both the fraud Bobby Jindal and Mrs. Palin would have happily carried on.

I couldn’t be more delighted today that the president is going to announce that his administration is going to be “guided by science,” so the Bobby Jindals and their lunatic followers can chase ghosts and demons on weekends, and let the mental adults in America get on with the business of cleaning up the mess that leaked out of the diapers of America’s lunatic fringe over the last eight years. If intellectual power is the new masculinity, then it’s time for Bobby and Co. to head over to the far end of the playground and keep out of the way.

I agree with most of Obama’s policies, not all. Can you name one world leader whose every decision you regard as the right one, throughout his or her career? It’s a given that every single president will fall short of the hopes of those who elected him; I’ve already been angered by the new administration’s refusal to protect wolves in the west, for example. You think this Freeman character is evidence of a serious lapse in judgment or a dangerous ideological stance on the part of our lad Barack. But I really am writing a post here about tone and style — because masculinity, as popularly understood, is about tone and style.

This is a thread about the outer way in which our presidents present their manhood and their intellect - it is not about their policies, which for better or for worse are easily divorced from the way in which they perform their masculinity.

So my point is that in my opinion focusing on Obama’s “elegance,” his “intellectualism,” is distracting ourselves from the issue of whom we see as a true leader. I think that Obama’s style and intelligence must be seen as being nested within the broader and more important issues of his policies.

What is masculinity? Is it elegance or the courage to look evil in the eye and say, “Not on my watch”? On the basis of your postings, Hugo, I feel confident about guessing that the standards you demand of yourself include accountability, honesty and moral courage. Why be “giddy with delight” about a man whose actions, in my mind, show his standards to be so much lower?

Stentor, good point — I’ve said before that at times McCain ran less as an American archetype than as a Roman one. Cato the Elder.

re Hollywood phantasies and Jean-Luc Picard

<blo”Many would argue yes. I’ve always preferred Picard. It is, partly, a generational thing.”

My impression has always been that the essence of masculinity hasn’t really changed between Kirk, Picard, and Obama - a willingness to assume responsibilities, being a protector of loved ones, an inexplicable confidence and unwillingness to be bound by the rules others have made that leads to female attraction. There is a difference between assertiveness - positive aggression, as in confidence - and negative aggression, as in, eg, physical violence that is not necessary for a greater good (as in protector of loved ones). Negative aggression has, in my opinion, never been part of any masculine ideal as it is *always* actually a sign of weakness. Think Jungle Book - is Shirkan a masculine ideal because he is strong and threatens violence? Is the Lion King’s brother a masculine ideal?

The fact - and I think you are right about this - that until Obama American leaders weren’t more able to live up to the ideal (Clinton may have, had he been living in France ;)) doesn’t make the ideal less real, at least in my impression.

Yes, Jindal was wrong to perform an exorcism without the sanction of the church. (If it was even an actual exorcism at all). I don’t see how that makes him a ‘fundamentalist Catholic’ in any sense of the world. If that phrase is to have any meaning it would mean an ultramontanist, one who hews unquestionably to every line of the Vatican, and never dissents. Jindal’s exorcism was in defiance of the Vatican guidelines, and therefore that would tend to make him, if anything, a heterodox Catholic, quite the opposite of the Vatican.

And really, I think the bigger problem today isn’t the few like Jindal who perform unwarranted exorcisms, it’s the increasing number of Christians who deny the existence of things like demons, Hell, and the devil entirely. That kind of “modernist” thinking is a greater danger to the Catholic and other apostolic churches than a handful of Jindals. I mean, I don’t think exorcisms happen very often these days, but they are certainly possible in theory- Jesus performed them, after all. As for the conversion, I think it’s more likely that Jindal came to realize that Christianity was true, as I did.

I also have no doubt that even at 17, he realized that there was no way he would ever be elected as a non-Christian Indian, so I have no trouble believing that his conversion was opportunistic and politically motivated.