The video below isn’t a photo-op, but with just a week and a day from that interview to the Iowa Caucuses, Santorum spent a lot of air-time on Fox News talking about pheasant kills.

After beer and guns, is there anything else he needs to say to prove he’s a manly man, and therefore, fit to be the president?

See the video from Mediaite.

UPDATE: It turns out there is video of the hunting trip. Sad for Santorum, though, as The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur points out, the hunting party doesn’t get him the endorsement he wants.

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Video from The Daily Beast.

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Here’s the video:

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H/t: Huffington Post

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[GQ Correspondent] Chris Heath: What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?

Herman Cain: [repeats the question aloud, then pauses for a long moment] The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.

Chris Heath: Why is that?

Herman Cain: Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. [laughs]

[GQ Senior Editor] Devin Gordon: Is that purely a meat question?

Herman Cain: A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

Another GOP candidate touted their manliness as a qualification for office on Nov. 16.

From CNN.com:

“If we want to change this country up…I’m your man,” [GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele] Bachmann said in Webster City, Iowa, on Wednesday. “When people think of the president, they think of who is that individual. And I’m willing to ‘man up,’ so to speak, for the job and do what needs to be done… I’m a very strong woman.”

So, it’s started. The candidates are beginning to man up for the election.

All of this may be moot. Bachmann has been down in the polls for weeks, and Cain may drop out by the end of the week. But these probably won’t be the last flexing their manly muscles. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t matter if the candidate is a man or woman. For some, manliness is a qualification for office.

Which of the pizzas served at the GQ interview did Cain like the most? It shouldn’t be a surprise: “The man pizza!” he said. “The manly pizza! That was great.”

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That second title is what The Atlantic recently called him. They posted 32 pictures of Putin doing many manly things: He’s a race car driver, shirtless hunter and a martial artist. He also dives for treasure, rides with leather- and tattoo-clad “motorcycle enthusiasts” and is a concert pianist. (So, he’s cultured, too.)

As much swagger Americans like our elected officials to have, I’m glad our politicians don’t go to the extremes of Putin. The worst American equivalent in recent memory would be Bush’s “Mission: Accomplished” carrier landing in full Top Gun flight gear. If there was a photo of Rick Perry jogging with his Ruger .380 pistol, that would probably be a close second.

Yes, politics is a lot of theater, but there’s an easy way for every politician to prove they are tough, strong and worthy of their position:

Keep their word and do their job.

UPDATE: Theater, by definition, is staged. Turns out Putin’s treasure diving trip was staged, too.

H/t: Art Of Manliness

Photo credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images via The Atlantic

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One might think that when it came to governing, the public might actually like the idea of someone who portrays himself as rational, deliberate, attentive to opposing points of view — a conciliator rather than a head-banger. But Americans have always thought of themselves as tough and uncompromising — able to beat their problems or enemies into submission. Older white men, a key part of the Republican Party base, seem particularly to want their politicians to be heroic and full of bluster — just like Schwarzenegger.

Not coincidentally, this is also the very thing that Americans, again especially men, have always loved about their movie heroes. Our most popular films are predicated on a bold individual who, usually without much outside assistance or much internal reflection, vanquishes everything before him. Our heroes get the job done, whatever it takes.

And again, not incidentally, they also get the woman, who swoons in the cloud of his testosterone. We all know that female subjugation is one component of the American male power fantasy.

It is no wonder, then, that our movies and politics would become conflated, especially in California, home of the motion picture industry. Schwarzenegger’s appeal in the gubernatorial race was that he came on like a hero, the un-Gray Davis, California’s then-governor, who seemed aptly named. Davis appeared wimpy. Arnold seemed … like Arnold. He was everything that a movie hero and a governor ought to be: a real man’s man.

But that sense of untrammeled masculine power is also embedded, in politics as in the movies, with a certain attitude toward women. Our film heroes aren’t gauzy romantics. They are sexual swashbucklers who often have little use for women — or, more accurately, have one use for women.

Though he had tempered his public misogyny since his bodybuilding days, Schwarzenegger wasn’t elected in spite of his disregard for women. Insofar as it informed his machismo and demonstrated his masculine power, he was elected because of it.

This goes back to what I wrote last year about politicians who insult their opponents by saying they should “man up.” The phrase implies that manliness and machismo are requirements to hold elective office. It’s not a big leap between that attitude and the lack of female elected officials in this country compared to the rest of the world.

Gabler analysis of how voters feel about politicians gives insight into how some voters feel about women and their role in politics. Macho heroes in films, he writes, don’t have any use for women except one. The implication is that one reason is sex. The female character can’t do anything else for the macho hero – not help him, not work with him, not take the lead as the hero. If sex is the only thing the macho hero needs from women, and voters look at their political candidates and movie heroes in similar ways, is sex the only thing those macho-loving voters expect from women?

This is more than just what voters want from their candidates. It’s about the public’s expectations for women.

Gabler takes an odd turn at the end. He surprisingly – and wrongly – excuses Schwarzenegger’s actions:

But you can’t really blame Schwarzenegger for hitting on women, even his own housekeeper. He was simply acting out the male fantasy that men had already imposed on him.

Schwarzenegger is a grown man with free will. He made bad choices and needs to own them. Don’t blame society. Giving Schwarzenegger and other politicians a pass is what allows sexism in politics and everywhere else to continue.

Read Gabler’s entire piece here.

UPDATE:

I just found the following bite from a January article in the New York Times Magazine. I set it aside for a post I was trying to write earlier this year that never came together (which just proves it’s a good idea to save those unfinished ideas and occasionally go back to them!).

In the Times piece, Rebecca Traister, who authored “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women” about the 2008 presidential election, wrote:

The mythos of our founding revolves entirely around fathers, save for the seamstress Betsy Ross and the querulous spouse Abigail Adams.

What we do have, to serve as the foundational fantasy of female strength and individualism we’ve agreed upon as embodying American power, are cowgirls: Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, the outlaws, frontier women and pioneers who pushed West, shot sharp, talked tough and sometimes drew blood. Frontier womanhood has emerged as one of the only historically American models of aspirational femininity available to girls — passive princesses and graceful ballerinas not being native to this land — and one of the only blueprints for commanding female comportment in which they are regularly encouraged to invest or to mimic.

Compared to male leaders, Traister wrote in the piece, “We have made considerably less imaginative space for ways in which women can persuade us of their ability to lead.”

So, women must have that macho swagger for elective office, too. But if they made the same sexual transgressions as some male politicians have, I don’t think the public would be as forgiving of them and as forgetful of the sexual wrongdoing.

See Also:
Man Up And Cry

Photo Credit: NOVAOnline/Flickr

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And compared to Barack Obama, Cain thinks he is a “real black man.”

That’s what Cain said on Wednesday at a Tea Party function in Florida. The mainstream media is scared, according to Cain, that Sarah Palin or Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann would get the Republican nomination for president. Then he said, “[The mainstream media is] doubly scared that a real black man might run against Barack Obama.”

The passage begins about 2:37 in:

This takes Man Up to a different and interesting level. During the 2010 election, Man Up and its variations were used to demean candidates who were accused by their opponents as not having the “cajones” or “man-pants” to be strong and decisive leaders.

Politico reported that, according to Cain’s spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael, he wasn’t “challenging Obama’s racial origin.” She said, ”He was referring to himself in the first person…He was saying that there could be a general election with two black men.” Then why the emphasis on the word “real?” And why bring up race at all? In that one remark, Cain asserted his own black masculinity, while questioning Obama’s.

So, it begs the question: Is Cain a “real black man?” I don’t know, nor would I list qualities for one of any race. But a real man – and by that I mean a mature adult male – wouldn’t brag about how much of a “real man” he is.

See Also:
Man Up And Cry

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Or maybe your party just won the majority in a house of Congress.

When the Republicans won the House of Representatives, I said that not only was it fitting that Rep. John Boehner cried after an election season that was swept up with manning up, but he has every right to do it.

In last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview, though, the incoming House Speaker did more than just cry. He whimpered uncontrollably.. twice!

The next day on “The View,” Barbara Walters brought up the sexist double standard of this situation: If current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were a crier like Boehner, she would have been called weak. Walters said that Boehner’s “got a problem.” I agree. He can’t go into schools, because thinking about children having the opportunity to attain their dreams makes him cry? He can’t control himself when his wife talks about how proud she is of him? Is it too much to ask for the person who presides over a house of Congress and is second in line to the presidency during a historic economic crisis to be disciplined with his emotions?

I’m not saying Boehner needs to man up. This isn’t about being “man enough” for the job. This is about being an adult.

In addition to making tough decisions – like the issue of whether to raise the national debt limit that was mentioned in the “60 Minutes” piece – being an adult means having control. No one needs to be a robot, but mature adults don’t usually have spontaneous fits of rages. They don’t laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate moments. If they did, most people would call them immature. A political candidate who can’t control their anger or laughter would have a tough time getting elected.

You’d think the same would be true with crying, but not so when it comes to Boehner and Republicans. That’s another double standard here: A political one. Democrats have to prove how tough they are, while Republicans don’t. Vietnam War hero John Kerry tried proving how macho he was by going on a hunting excursion twelve days before the 2004 presidential election. Gail Collins writes about Democrats and Republicans, respectively, saying,

On the one hand, you have the folks who can’t afford tears because it makes them look weak, and on the other, the people who are presumed to be tough and hard-nosed, for whom crying is an attractive sign of complexity.

Yes, complexity, but not the type that some find attractive. Collins and others point out that Boehner’s tears over working-class Americans attaining prosperity runs counter to his voting record of giving less protection to struggling Americans while putting more power in the hands of the wealthy and powerful. Which could mean that the crying is an act, or maybe he’s disconnected from reality, or maybe as Timothy Egan asks,

Is Boehner crying because he escaped that fate? Or because of the person he has become — a politician whose votes show he couldn’t care less for the people he left behind?

It would be fascinating to find out why he cries so much. Assuming the tears are real, this powerful man has a need – a compulsion! – to cry about one of the ideas upon which this nation was built: social mobility. That idea allowed him to work his way through college by being a janitor and find success in business and politics. At the same time, he votes against those he says he wants to help. But my fascination ends when I remember Boehner is about to become the powerful Speaker of the House, yet he can’t control his emotions and behave like an adult.

Boehner needs to stop crying, put his votes where his sobs are and adult up!

See Also:
Man Up And Cry

He was talking about a clip in which Sarah Palin responds to unnamed Republican sources who reportedly don’t want her to run for president. She said they should “man up” and come forward so she could debate with them.

Palin’s remark was the latest in a string made by candidates this election year who told their opponents they were “unmanly” they needed to “man up,” “put your man-pants on,” or that they lacked “cojones.”

If a politician is going to criticize an opponent for not being strong enough or having certain skills, just say that. Man Up implies a candidate is not a “real” man because he’s weak, ineffectual and impotent. The slur is an attempt to undermine and insult him on the basis of what society thinks an ideal man is. It’s the male equivalent of what got California Governor-elect Jerry Brown in trouble when someone in his campaign called Meg Whitman a “whore.”

Man Up hurts women, too. It assumes masculinity is a qualification to hold public office. Equating “manly” with strength, productivity and integrity demeans women by excluding them from those characteristics. It doesn’t allow femininity to be powerful. That further marginalizes women in politics, which is something that the U.S. needs to improve.

In light of the testosterone litmus tests this year, it’s worth noting that presumptive House Speaker John Boehner cried on Election night. He wept when he spoke about spending his “whole life chasing the American dream.”

There absolutely nothing wrong with a man crying in public. In fact, it was actually fitting he did. In an election season when terms like ‘man up” and “unmanly” were thrown at candidates, the head of the winning party wept. Politics clearly isn’t immune from American masculinity’s soul-searching and attempts to figure itself out.

Boehner’s tears won’t stop the Man Up trend. It’s an easy soundbite to throw at a candidate. I do hope, though, that the next candidate who’s told to “man up” can call out the remark’s inherent sexism. If they win, they should feel free to rejoice and cry in victory.

Sure, that’s not the worst thing you could say to someone, but if you use someone’s gender to attack them, isn’t that sexism? When a female candidate’s sex life is made public, it’s done to shame her because some people think women should be sexually modest. When a male candidate’s masculinity is questioned and he’s told to “man-up” or “be man enough,” is that shaming him by saying he’s weak and impotent?

A recent study by the Women’s Media Center showed using sexism in political campaigns works when men use it against candidates who are women. When women fight back, though, voters favor them.

There’s a difference between fighting the sexism and just responding to it. When Nevada Senate candidate Sharon Angle told Harry Reid to “man-up,” Reid, a former boxer, said, “From the street to the ring to the Senate chamber, I’ve never had to prove my manhood to anyone.” That’s an adequate response, but by mentioning “the street” and “the ring” he actually was asserting his toughness, and therefore, attempting to prove his manhood.

Photos were recently released of Krystal Ball, a congressional candidate in Virginia, and her then-husband at a college party playing with sex toys. She responded to the photos by saying:

Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

In talking about the support she received from Hillary Clinton’s supporters and those who fought for women’s rights in previous generations, Ball said:

They will not see their daughters called whores when they run for office just because of some college or post-college party. They will not watch the tide of everything they fought for washed away by the public exposure of female sexuality.

That is fighting back!

It would be interesting to see if the Women’s Media Center study’s results would be the same if the genders were reversed, but I don’t think male wouldn’t fight back like Ball did. Not yet. It would mean challenging the strong, silent type that is the model of the modern American man: Take your licks, suck it up and move on. Politicians and the public aren’t ready to have that conversation. We may be aware that the modern man needs to be redefined, but we don’t know what he’s supposed to be.

Not yet.

See Also:
Both Gawker And O’Donnell Fail In “One-Night Stand” Story