Where are the Men? Right Here, Baby . . .

“Why can’t we get laid?”

Nathaniel Blake and Derb have diagnosed the Rooseveltian weaknesses of the American Boy, who has been softened by our culture into a cowardly mound of goo. Some people are outraged that Blake and Derb would, from a great distance, chide the living and the dead in Norris Hall for neglecting their obligations to generate good screenplay material. I don’t think, however, that any of this quite captures the thrust of their arguments.

Now, I understand that while many prepubescent boys fantasize about being rescued by a helicopter, others like Blake and Derb pass their days in quiet, semi-erect reverie, devising scenarios to win the hearts of girls — girls who would not otherwise stoop to spit on them — by saving them from masked bandits, rabid wolves, or perhaps an ululating swarm of Arabs. “Someday,” they think to themselves, “I’ll get my chance. Then they’ll see.” And with that, they go back to practicing their defiant sneers and snappy one-liners in the mirror. “Let’s roll” has been taken, but they’re pretty sure they’ll think of something really, really cool when the time comes.

Well, Nathaniel Blake and John Derbyshire weren’t fortunate enough to be among the students being showered with bullets at Virginia Tech earlier this week, and so they couldn’t show off their outstandingly manly characters and totally off-the-hook kung fu skills — the combination of which would have entitled them to a gracious whirl of fellatio from all the women whose lives they might have selflessly protected. Having missed that opportunity, however, the boys can only remind the world that they would have done things differently. Maybe that will be good enough for a hand job behind the bleachers. Who knows? It’s worth a shot.

And so Blake, jostling for position and reduced to humping his own hand, observes that

[s]omething is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.

Rather than dismiss this as nothing more than heartless tongue-clucking, we have to see Blake’s words as a kind of desperate wingnut mating call. “I’m an alpha male! My seed is strong and vital!”

Then, like a rutting panda, Blake stands on his head an pees against the wall, proving that he is indeed the most prodigious male in the area.

And as for John Derbyshire, his motives are even more transparent. After all, what better way to score with a young woman in her physical prime than to rush a guy who only “[has] two handguns for goodness’ sake!” Damn. The thought of Derb rushing a crazed gunman, taking harmless .22 slugs to non-vital regions of the body . . . well, that gives even a weakling American male like myself strange feelings I don’t quite understand.