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June 8, 2006
real real men
The Report to the Nearest Counter post elicited much discussion, all of it originating from women, about whether the ring purchaser was a real man or merely an idiot. Therein lies a fundamental difference in perspective, as I do not see the two as mutually exclusive. I could wax about what constitutes manliness, maybe draw venn diagrams about where maniliness and stupidity overlap, but I'd much rather just rattle off the first five visceral "real man" moments I thought of.
Galileo Galilee, astronomer. Oh sure, anyone could have pointed a telescope at the heavens and discovered craters on the moon or the Galilean moons around Jupiter. And others might have withstood persecution by the tyrannical Catholic Church, whose teachings the discoveries disproved. But only one man would respond by writing a novel in which a scientist comically humiliates a priest in debate—and base that priest character on the reigning Pope. Galileo paid for his ballsiness with his freedom, but I suspect he thought it was worth it. And 400 years later, the Catholic church apologized. What sports. (Fun fact: Galileo's right middle finger is stored in a jar in Florence. I can only hope that it faces the Vatican.)
Alan Shepard, test pilot and Mercury astronaut. They were all real men, of course, but he was the realest and man-est and my favorite. The first American in space, he was ice-cold under pressure. When his Apollo flight risked cancellation because two spacecraft couldn't dock, he offered to leave the ship and pull the two spacecraft together by hand.
Jack Lambert, linebacker. Any number of athletes could be here (I very nearly chose Steve McNair). But Lambert has my favorite single moment. He played at tiny Kent State, and the day that the Steelers scout visited, the marching band was using the field and the football team was walking through plays in the parking lot. Lambert lunged to make an interception, and from then on between plays could be seen nonchalantly picking shards of broken glass out of his arm and tossing them aside. The Steelers quickly drafted him.
Jackie Robinson, baseball player Okay, I need two athletes on the list. It's popularly excepted that Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball, is a civil rights hero. As such he's attained a sort of sanitizing sainthood, and that's a shame. He had a first rate temper, and it saw him through the unrelenting and unprecedented abuses to which he was subjected from all sides. When a particularly clever umpire told him to "go back to the jungle, you little nigger," Robinson punched the umpire square in the mouth. History does not record the size of Robinson's testicles, but they must have been like bowling balls. (Fun fact: Today, no one on any baseball team is permitted to wear Robinson's #42. The umpire's identity is not remembered.)
Andrew Jackson, General and President. President Jackson was taking a stroll one day when an assassin leapt out and fired a gun at him, point-blank. The gun misfired. Then the assailant's second gun misfired. And then President Jackson beat the guy into submission with his cane. (Fun fact: the odds of two misfires occurring were 1 in 150,000.)
posted by john at 12:17 AM • permalink