MANLY MEN AND THEIR MANLY MANLINESS

It never ceases to amaze me how much phony macho you can sell right-wingers without inspiring the slightest bit of skepticism in them. For instance, the Web site of one fairly successful mid-level right-wing pundit, Don Feder, is actually the Don Feder Cold Steel Caucus Report. In the site's introduction we're told,

The Cold Steel Caucus Report is not for the faint-hearted. It's not for summer soldiers and sunshine patriots....

It's for conservatives who believe in the old heroes -- Washington, John Adams, Andy Jackson, Abe Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. It's for conservatives who believe that all of our great days aren't behind us, and that God will raise up mighty men to lead us again.

Elsewhere on the site we have this cartoon:



And the lead item on the site right now is a speech to "the Independent Third Force Conservative Leadership Summit," delivered by Feder earlier this month. It ends with the sentence:

It's time for us to pick up our muskets and take a stand on that rude bridge with those embattled farmers -- the Forgotten Americans of today.

Apparently, none of his fans consider this too much.

Oh, and when he was of fightin' age? Well, this is all I could find:

Feder is a 1969 graduate of the Boston University College of Liberal arts and a 1972 graduate of the Boston University Law School.

That sure was an interesting time in American history to have been the right age for military service, and yet, curioussly, he makes no mention of it at all.