Like a fragrant plume from a handrolled cigar, manliness sweetens the air. What it means, who has it and why it matters is suddenly big news in an America that’s had to endure a feminist pogrom of gender cleansing for the past 30 years.

The occasion for the renascent interest is the release of the new book Manliness by Harvard professor of government Harvey C. Mansfield, in which he makes the old-fashioned claim that "the virtues of men and women are different and complementary." Mansfield must have hit a nerve, because the book’s been picked up for review by every newspaper that matters. The most recent Weekly Standard cover fondly recalls "When Men Were Men," and interviews with Mansfield are showing up in the New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio and other assorted vehicles.

Manliness comes on the heels of another revealing look at the state of American manhood: LA Times columnist Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back again. The author disguises herself as a man, joins a bowling league in New Jersey, and sets out to document life among what she assumes will be a bunch of foul-mouthed, homophobic boors. Instead, she ends up befriending a group of working-class white guys who pretty much "take you at face value" and "speak with absolute reverence about their wives."

Vincent also supposed that her impersonation of a likeable, sensitive metrosexual named NED would accord her the status of Chick Magnet. Au contraire: "Women want men who can fix things," he/she discovers.

Women like men who can fix things.Recall that it wasn’t six months ago that Maureen Dowd was posing the question Are Men Necessary? in her book of the same name. Powerful, well-educated men, in her experience, tend to be put off (she uses the term ‘threatened’) by powerful, well-educated women like…uh…herself. Proof of their pathetic insecurity! What else could account for the persistent exercise by men of their aboriginal preference for "a good looking woman who is kind" over a razor-sharp, stiletto-heeled mistress of the universe? "Men as a species," she concludes, "are so last century."

I’m fantasizing that Dowd might have auditioned that quip in the ladies’ room at The New York Times for the benefit of colleague Deborah Solomon, because it dovetails so nicely with one of Ms. Solomon’s "Questions for Harvey Mansfield" in the March 12 New York Times Sunday Magazine : "I am beginning to wonder," Solomon scolds, "if you have ever spoken to a woman. Your ideas are so Victorian."

Perhaps, Deborah, and yet the level of interest in Mansfield’s ideas and the proliferation of similarly-themed projects (The Alphabet of Manliness, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, He’s just not that Into You,) makes me wonder if you Times babes might not be misreading the zeitgeist-- a spectacular boo-boo if you make a living as a cognoscente. And I thought I was insular.

Here we have Fatal Feminist Premise #1: Equality for Women Hinges on the Institution of a Gender-Neutral Society. What happened there was that scores of newly minted feminists went on to bear children, and then watched helplessly as their little boys hurled rocks at moving cars and their little girls prepared mud pies for baking. The Utopian Androgynous Worldview is just so Carter era, only a barren Women’s Studies major could possibly buy it anymore.

Which brings me back to the SMU Women’s Symposium I wrote about a few weeks ago. Seated at my table were six or so young women, all childless. After Anne Crittenden’s lecture entitled "Having It All – Our Families and Our Futures"—we were asked to enter into a discussion at our table. To my immediate left were two twenty-something Planned Parenthood apparatchiks who contributed comments to the effect that they felt the lecture overemphasized women’s roles in childrearing. "I would not want to deprive my husband of the opportunity to stay home with the children," one reasoned. I almost choked on my arugula. "Trust me," I offered, "he’ll never raise the issue."

What ensued was a spirited debate about gender roles, our table mostly agreeing that they’re "artificially imposed by the patriarchy," and then there was little ol’ me, lighting a candle for the biological imperativistas.

Here’s how Deborah Solomon framed the same issue before Harvey C. Mansfield:

Q.: Were you sorry to see Harvard’s outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, attacked for saying that men and women may have different mental capacities?

A: He was taking seriously the notion that women, innately, have less capacity than men at the highest level of science. I think it’s probably true. It’s common sense if you just look at who the top scientists are.

A: It could, but I don’t think it does. We have been going a couple of generations now. There are certain things that haven’t changed. For example, in New York City, the doormen are still 98 percent men.

Did I mention that Harvey Mansfield is a tenured professor at Harvard?

Fatal Feminist Premise #2: The Guys are Going to Have to Get With the Program if Our Agenda is to Succeed.

What I wished I had said to my tablemates at the Women’s Symposium is this: Look around: Do you see any guys in here? Have you ever heard of a Men’s Symposium??

The Battle of the Sexes is a misnomer: it can’t be a battle if one of the sides opts not to engage. Men, it’s now abundantly clear, never felt they had a dog in this hunt. Feminism turns out to have been a rebellion of women against domesticity, a flight from our nature. Snatch victory from that if you can.

You may well be wondering how it is that I am able to stay one step ahead in the march of civilization. My window on the world is the grocery store, and it is in here that any new rumblings from the frontier of weird science will first be felt. Truly I believe this. Ask yourself what it means that we now grow strawberries the size of Rome apples.

Chances are Nostradamus will have an opinion on this, and you will get your fill of him from the tabloid rack in the checkout line. One time I experienced the rush of cheating death when I looked up and noticed that the exact date and time the Star predicted the world would end had just elapsed while I was loading dogfood onto the belt. I’m telling you, things of cosmic proportions are always happening to me in the Tom Thumb.

Last December, I was wheeling my cart down the baking aisle looking for bread crumbs when a woman about my age & stage approached, waving me down with her bottle of Mazola. "Scuse me," she inquired demurely, "is this the same thing as Corn Syrup?" I found this shocking. – Is that harsh? It’s not like we’re talking about some obscure ingredient like pomegranate seeds. Um, no madam, Mazola Corn Oil is not the same thing as Karo Light Corn Syrup, the stuff six year olds use to make lollipops. I pulled a bottle of Karo from the shelf for her, astounded that a woman could reach midlife without ever having baked a pecan pie. It can only mean that her mother never baked one, either. So it becomes statistically unlikely that she’s ever rifled through the pages of Southern Living at a doctor’s office or checkout line, or by now she would have encountered a recipe, an ad, something to introduce her to the concept of corn syrup. And we’re worried about the ozone layer.

What I had just witnessed was the X chromosome shedding a gene. The thought occurred to me: Is it possible for a species to "forget" its biological imperative?

Maureen Dowd sees the day dawning when men will have outlived their biological purpose. Drawing on research conducted by British geneticists Brian Sykes and Steve Jones, she cites an imminent medical breakthrough in which a female egg will be fertilized by the transfer of DNA from another egg, sidestepping the need for sperm altogether. "What I think’ll happen within my lifetime," opines Dr. Sykes, "is that some lesbian couples will have children, and they will both be parents, an egg from one and a fertilized egg from the other will produce a perfectly normal girl." And if that’s not weird enough, these same dudes have set about documenting the decline and probable disappearance of the Y chromosome. It may take anywhere from 125,000 to three million years, but apparently we now know how the Stag Party’s gonna end.

I wonder, though. Men may get the last laugh yet. By the time we figure out how to fertilize an egg without them, women may well have lost the inclination. Look what’s happened to cooking.

There are stark differences between African-Americans and Latinos regarding the illegal immigration issues. I will attempt to summarize how many Black folks feel about this issue. First and most importantly, we do not consider the immigration issue a civil rights issue. Granted, illegal immigrants have been victimized, but to compare the plight of non-citizens trying to jump start their right to citizenship with the plight of Black citizens who were fighting for rights already owed to us under the constitution is a bit disingenuous.

I don’t know many Black folks who support rounding up 11 million illegal immigrants and sending them back to Mexico. Most of us realize it is impractical and inhumane. Yet, very few African-Americans sympathize with those who advocate complete amnesty for people who have willingly broken the law. No race of people in this country has been as adversely impacted by the criminal justice system as African-Americans. For us to support amnesty for illegal aliens would put us in a contradictory position. During the civil rights era, nobody was advocating amnesty for Dr. King and other civil rights leaders even though their cause was noble and just.

Many of us in the African-American community are having difficulty identifying those jobs illegal aliens will take that Black folks won’t take. We know of plenty jobs where the pay is illegally low that we are not willing to do. But we cannot identify those jobs where the pay is fair and legal that we are unwilling to do. For example, several Black high school kids work at a number of fast food outlets in order to support themselves and help out their families. Many of these jobs have been identified by illegal immigration advocates as jobs Black folks don’t want to do.

When Black folks visit Parkland Hospital we are in line behind illegal immigrants. Our teachers, a significant segment of the Black middle class, are threatened as Latino leaders advocate for Spanish speaking educators to accommodate our public school system that has been inundated with the children of illegal immigrants. Whether urban myth or not, the perception that un-insured illegal immigrant motorists have made our streets unsafe and more costly is yet another reason why African-Americans and Latinos see this immigration issue very differently.

Black citizens have not been very vocal on this issue for a few reasons. One reason is that many of the proponents of tougher immigration laws are conservative whites who have traditionally opposed us on civil rights and affirmative action issues. We still acknowledge something must be done to protect Black workers from unfair competition with illegal, under paid immigrant workers. At the same time, many of us have political and social ties to a number of Latinos and thus we feel their pain.

Our government has done a horrible job of enforcing our immigration laws. Thus we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to fix something right away that has been broken for a very long time. With the exception of The Medrano family, Adelpha Callejo, and a few others, not many Hispanics can claim a history with us in the civil rights movement. Latinos leading the illegal immigration fight cannot assert Black folks should be with them because Latinos have done so much for us. Black history does not validate that claim. At least that is how Black folks South of the Trinity see it.

It seems like every year right before Easter the mainstream media highlights a major "new discovery" which discredits the central Christian beliefs about the betrayal, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. One year it was an ostensible Christian theologian proclaiming "the death of God" In other years it has been academics "proving" that Christ was only a man and/or that the Resurrection never happened. Of course, this is the year of the "gnostic gospels". The best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code, is about to be made into a movie. The novel seeks to make the case that Christ didn’t die on the cross but instead married Mary Magdalene. All of this is supposed to be proved by the discovery of a "gnostic gospel".

Thus, it is appropriate that a new "gnostic gospel" is headlined this Easter season which seeks to rehabilitate the apostle Judas who betrayed Jesus by turning Him over to the high priests for thirty pieces of silver. Leave it to the Dallas Morning News to hype this "new" revelation of the "Gospel of Judas" in a front page story in Friday’s paper.

While the News has totally ignored the story of the UT professor who has called for the extermination of 90% of the human race, it prominently features on the top left hand side of its front page a one-sided story by Randolph Schmidt of the AP highlighting this "new discovery" of the "Gospel of Judas". The article, in effect, suggests that this new gospel should be taken at face value, and its writings accepted as credible.

First of all, this is old news which has previously been reported on by Richard Ostling of the AP in a much more objective fashion. In an article entitled "Expert Doubts ‘Gospel of Judas’ Revelation", Ostling quotes America’s leading expert on "ancient religious texts from Egypt," James Robinson, as describing the new manuscript a "dud" as far as discovering anything new about Judas.

This so-called "Gospel of Judas" was apparently written long after the other four gospels which are accepted by Christians as the word of God. These "gnostic gospels" were part of the writings of a heretical sect known as the Cainites, and the "gospel of Judas" was believed to have been written somewhere between 120 and 170 a.d. by someone (obviously) other than Judas. This phony Gospel was attacked as a fraud by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons around A.D. 180. Again the previous AP story by Richard Ostling is illuminating:

Surely, the editors of the News could have discovered all of this themselves since they did make reference in a sidebar on page 2 to Bishop Irenaeus’ denunciation of the "Gospel of Judas". But, that didn’t stop the News from giving front page coverage to a highly questionable claim that the Gospel of Judas should be included alongside the Gospels of Matthews, Mark, Luke and John.

The Houston Chronicle had a much more balanced story on the controversy. It quoted two biblical scholars who were not impressed with the discovery:

It makes on wonder who is making editorial and news decisions down at the Dallas Morning News these days.

It was an embarrassing scene. The one where Tom DeLay—boisterous bully of the U.S. House, former Majority Leader, and true face of the Republican Party—turned tail and ran like a sixth-grade sissy who’d just had his ass whipped by a fourth-grade schoolgirl.

DeLay recently spent a ton of other people’s money securing the nomination for another House term against several congressional wannabes in the March GOP primary warm-up for November. Suddenly—less than a month later—Sugar Land’s most famous indictee threw in the towel without ever climbing into the ring for the real match. DeLay claimed the general election contest with former Congressman Nick Lampson, the Democratic nominee for Congressional District 22, would be a “nasty” referendum on DeLay. Translation: it would be an election in which DeLay would be called upon to defend his “championship title” to being one of the most worthless solons to ever soil the halls of democracy. It would be a plebiscite on him and all those corrupt interests he’s been a proxy for all these years, like Jack Abramoff and other K Street lobbyists and their clients who now own Capitol Hill and the GOP.

The real reason the Bully-in-Chief quit the race against Lampson, of course, was because he was going to lose, and things were not going to start moving in his direction, what with all the Abramoff and TRMPAC sewage creeping up around his neckline.

But as we know, you can never trust DeLay. Although he says he is, he’s not really going away. DeLay’s the schoolyard bully who, when successfully challenged, runs to a safe distance and then sticks his tongue out at you. He’s one of the people who believe the rules are for everyone else, whatever the rules might be, like telling the truth or obeying the law. Remember, DeLay said Abramoff was one of his dearest friends before DeLay said he wasn’t. This is the man, you’ll recall, who once boasted, “I am the federal government,” when told he could not smoke his cigar in a federal building. When asked to explain why he didn’t serve in Viet Nam, he said, “ So many minority youths had volunteered that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”

Those who become mad with power become madmen, period. And they bring their sycophants along with them in their madness. There’s always an angle to what they do—even if it’s just the extraction of revenge—whether or not the motive or end is rational or legitimate. So, instead of stepping down immediately, DeLay has decided to hang on for awhile (until June, perhaps) in an attempt to manipulate the congressional-selection process. He says he’s withdrawing from the general election and will “move” to Virginia so that he becomes “ineligible” under the Texas Election Code. Through this charade DeLay and his backroom confederates hope to engineer the selection of a replacement nominee of their choice through a small district executive committee of the Republican Party. Contrary to the assumptions of the press and others, there are some of us who believe a replacement for DeLay cannot be lawfully selected, given the facts that now exist, and that DeLay is betting a friendly Republican judiciary will come to the Party’s aid should the legal arrows start to fly.

In the meantime, DeLay has appeared on serial-marryer and illegal drug user Rush Limbaugh’s “shout radio” program to play the victim. Poor Tom. He’s been so picked on and demonized by that partisan prosecutor from The People’s Republic of Austin, the left-wingers and the press. How was he to know that several of his closest associates were trading off his name, or that payments to his wife and another family member were not really on the up-and-up? Duped, he was, into those expensive golfing trips and vacations to fancy places. Et cetera.

When DeLay is not busy manipulating the process or exploiting the airwaves these days, he’s retreating to the protective sanctuary of his “religious” defenders—that annoying and dyslexic-by-choice bunch of so-called Christians who read Matthew 21:12 as saying you should bring the money-changers into the temple, not throw them out. They are the same ones who will swear in the name of their Creator that Mathew 1:7 says “judge first, lest ye be judged.”

Meanwhile, like a Baskerville curse unleashed on his district and all the country, DeLay’s hounds are on the roam. Last Thursday, Democrat Lampson, one heck of a fine fellow and a courteous man of unquestionable substance, tried to hold a press conference in front of Sugar Land City Hall to call for a May special election to fill the vacancy that DeLay’s surrender will create. Let’s allow the people to elect someone to represent them over the next many months, Lampson wanted to say. This is a position DeLay opposed. DeLay wants to leave the district without representation for half a year. Gov. Rick Perry, a DeLay lapdog, quickly agreed that the people should not be represented. This is the same governor who did not hesitate to call quick special elections in state house districts 48 and 106 when he thought the political winds favored Republicans. This is the same idiot governor who urgently called multiple special sessions to enact DeLay’s congressional redistricting scheme to insure “proper” representation of the people, while ignoring property tax and education reform.

As Lampson spoke in favor of the right to vote, a horde of thugs organized by DeLay’s still-employed campaign manager, Chris Homan, aggressively overran the press conference, shouting, waving signs and blasting an air horn. It was an in-your-face political assault. One brownshirt hit Marsh Rovai, a 70-year-old Lampson supporter, and another reportedly pushed a “protest” sign in her face. When she tried to defend herself, a man wearing a Tom DeLay tee-shirt slapped her cap down over her face. One person described the Republican aggressors as “mainstream party regulars” from Fort Bend County, including Ken Dexter, a member of the grand jury. A Republican activist said that the “hounds” consisted of “several Republican leaders . . . from the full spectrum of the party.”

Homan, who recently worked for Dallas Congressman Pete Sessions and, in my view, engineered the incredibly phony claim that Martin Frost plastered campaign signs all over Sessions’ kid’s school during their 2004 race, sent an e-mail to many Republicans the day before the Sugar Land offensive, providing details on a rendezvous point and declaring, “Let’s give Lampson a parting shot that wrecks his press conference.” He instructed his political attack dogs to call the DeLay campaign office to coordinate their activities. The organization of the Sugar Land assault was reportedly assisted by many others, including Cress Ann Poston, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee. Several witnesses identified Terese Raia of Sugar Land, another SREC member and local precinct chair, who has been described as one of the most energetic members of Fort Bend County’s Christian Coalition, as being front and center in the mob, along with her husband. Raia and Poston are two of the four highest-ranking State Republican Party officials in their Sugar Land districts.

Homan was unapologetic after the Segretti-esque deed, pledging to keep up such assaults through November. Another Republican activist dismissed the attack as “good spirited politics.” Only a few sane Republicans saw the attack as a poor reflection on their party and Fort Bend County. They were, of course, promptly attacked by the “real” Republicans. So far, Homan’s loudmouth boss has been silent on the matter, something you can take as an endorsement of these political tactics. It’s DeLay’s way of sticking his tongue out at you.

Make no mistake. These people were not a few unsophisticated and errant campaign volunteers caught up in the moment, like a batch of unruly second graders at the bowling alley. These were grown women and men determined to chokehold democracy and believing they were right to do so. This was the Republican Party itself, and its face is still that of Tom DeLay.

Ken Molberg is the former Democratic Chairman of Dallas County and longtime Texas Democratic Party leader. He also is an attorney who specializes in employment law.