Xbox Geeks

The March issue of Chronicles is out with my review of Cort Kirkwood's Real Men. Here is a brief taste:

Kirkwood notes that the subjects of Real Men were made by the "cultural
milieu in which they are raised." When the President (who preferred political campaigning to fulfilling his obligations to the National Guard) and his hawkish neoconservative Vice President (a serial draft dodger) are happy to send American boys and girls to die for "democracy" in the Middle East, it is safe to say that our culture is no longer hospitable
to James' "ideals of hardihood."
Instead, our culture is hospitable to metrosexuals,
swooning neocons, Xbox geeks, and graying perpetual adolescents. Kirkwood's book reminds us of real men--and the culture that produced them.

Speaking of Kirkwood, he has an article in the same issue noting that in his disputes with President Bush and former Sen. George Allen, James Webb is the more conservative:

The struggle of Webb's rednecks against the elites in Born Fighting forshadowed his battle against Allen and Bush and their ilk -- the rootless, plutocratic oligarchs who amass power and wealth by exploiting the fierce, proud patriotism of the country's Webbs in war, then disposess them economically and culturally by advancing the interests of global corporate elites and by helping cultural leftists wage unremitting war against their children in school and their ancestors in history books.