"Joey’s family’s business is an undistinguished upstate New York watering hole.... It does hold one mystery for him, though."

"What, precisely, goes on in its back room?... Whatever nigh on miraculous peace that men are finding in there — one at a time, very hush-hush — Joey does not know the feeling. The blissful intensity of that sensation is the gospel news that gains acolytes in Max Wolf Friedlich’s gleefully weird comedy 'The Holes,' a tall tale of a play about, pardon the bluntness, manual stimulation as religious experience.... The play’s premise makes ample room for contemplation and satirization: of misogyny; economic exploitation; homophobic self-loathing; the barely-to-not-at-all veiled homoeroticism of all-male spaces; and the deliberate, cultish opacity of the men’s wellness niche. Also a target: the kind of counterfeit authenticity that Wesley envisions in his remade version of the bar. 'Honestly maybe we funk it up a bit,' he says, after Joey has done some sprucing. 'Spill some cans on the floor? I’m missing that old beer seeped into wood smell.'"

From the NYT review of the play "The Holes": "Benediction in the Back Room/The men’s wellness niche, and men-only spaces, come in for a skewering in Max Wolf Friedlich’s gleefully weird follow-up to 'Job.'"

"I think a lot of men view reading fiction as a frivolous waste of time. We’ve been conditioned to ignore the benefits of empathy."

"I think it’s a marketing problem. Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain. But it’s not just men. People who are happily staring at their phone all day don’t want to pick up a book. Their attention spans are fried."

From "Anthony Jeselnik: Men Should Think of Reading as 'Lifting Weights for Your Brain'/But the comedian isn’t naïve when he makes selections for his popular book club: 'Most importantly, they’re short'" (NYT gift link).

Asked "What’s a supposedly funny book that you just don’t find funny?," Jeselnik answers, "I have zero tolerance for David Sedaris." 

I wonder what David Sedaris would say about the notion that "Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain."

"I’m sorry to be crass about it, but I don’t think the point of the magazine is for self-pleasure. You no longer need a print magazine for that."

"It weirdly offers an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude, at a time when that is hard to come by."

Says Phillip Picardi, quoted in "I’ll make Playboy playful again, says its new gay editor/Phillip Picardi, a Catholic former Condé Nast wunderkind, also wants to attract women to the £30 magazine with more ‘artistic’ nudes and robust writing" (London Times).

He wants to “destigmatise male sexuality”, he says, and “help men to build a healthier relationship” with the women in their lives. “I’m hoping we can be a space for men who feel caught between needing to be manosphere-adjacent and needing to be the performative liberal male,” he says.... “We should promote the idea that we can be excited about sex and we can be excited about each other and excited about touching each other,” he says with a cheeky grin.

How Catholic is he? We're told he's "a lapsed Catholic who recently completed a master’s at Harvard Divinity School in order to rediscover his faith (his thesis was titled: Is Jesus Kinda Hot?)." Is religion part of making "playful again"? You can find "an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude" in church:

This reminds me of a sequence in the movie "Blue Moon," about the songwriter Lorenz Hart, who was gay, though not openly. The character has this conversation with the bartender. From the brilliant screenplay by Robert Kaplow (commission earned):

HART: You know what the sexiest thing on the planet earth is? A half-erect penis. 

EDDIE: Jesus Christ, Larry, nobody wants to hear this. 

"It has been an ungodly hot summer, but the shorts trend isn’t all about comfort. Some men seem to simply like the attention."

"'There’s something happening with men and their legs right now, and I don’t think it’s just the heat,' says Gauthier Borsarello, the creative director and co-founder of L’Étiquette magazine. Borsarello clocks the influence of celebrities such as Harry Styles and Paul Mescal, who are regularly photographed displaying the 'confident, slightly retro masculinity' of skimpy running shorts.... The shorts discourse is playing out as men are becoming more sophisticated in how they wield their sex appeal. 'They’re paying more attention to themselves overall, how they’re perceived, how they curate a silhouette, and thighs have quietly become part of that conversation,' Borsarello says. 'It’s a part of the body you can choose to reveal, deliberately, for a season, and a shorter short in summer does exactly that.'"

Writes Samuel Hine, in "The Summer of Male Shorts Anxiety" (NY Magazine).

As for that "'confident, slightly retro masculinity' of skimpy running shorts" — yes, if by retro, you mean the 1970s.

"Let me be clear. I don't think the homoeroticism is the weird part...."

Says Democratic Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-VT), talking about Pete Hegseth and testosterone:

"There are so many people in this administration that have some weird, like, intense homoerotic feelings toward men while also being incredibly homophobic and not just homophobic but, like, hate mongering, fear mongering about the LGBT community. Let me be clear. I don't think the homoeroticism is the weird part. The weird part is that they pretend that that's not what it's about. And so, Pete Hegseth was, like, the example of this, like the manly-manly rugged macho man, and I don't know if you know who Tom of Finland is. Tom of Finland — this is gay male porn that was drawn by a man, and, like, Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of that. So I feel like they must be looking at that as, like, their example of what men look like...."

I blogged about Tom of Finland back in 2014 in a post titled, "Finland issues stamps honoring an artist whose 'sleek sado-masochistic drawings with abundant amounts of beefy male nudity' portrayed 'a sensual life force and being proud of oneself'" ("The first quote in this post title is the way the NYT described the work of Touko Laaksonen, AKA Tom of Finland, and the second quote is from someone in Finland who chose the particular images for the stamps, who added: 'There is never too much [sensual life force and being proud of oneself] in this northern country'")(the only image at my post is of one of the stamps issued by Finland).

Balint gets pretty excited about her ideas in that clip, and that made me want to look up what she studied in college.

"Trump seemed very low-T in his East Room address."

Taunts Maureen Dowd, in "Low-T, High Chair" (NYT).

I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth, who says his “High-T Department of War” will start screening testosterone levels of “war fighters” age 30 and older, didn’t rush over to shoot up the flaccid 80-year-old commander in chief with the elixir of manhood needed, as he put it, to give America “the leading edge of lethality.”.... 

There was barely a peep from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech.... You could almost hear the fervent wish of Republican lawmakers watching the president: Please, Donald, move on! But he can’t. His father’s admonition that there are only "killers" and "losers" plays in a loop in his head, reducing him to jelly.... 

[H]e seemed impotent, raving about nonsense....

Tearing Trump down like that, Dowd adds to the mythology of male sexuality as the center of strength, courage, and reason. That's not feminism. 

"Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military."

"In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming 'effeminate, and apologetic'; he insisted that what liberals really want is 'soft men, and a weak military,' and he scolded 'Pentagon pussies' who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield. As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s 'effectiveness' in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos...."

So begins the Atlantic article, "Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone/The secretary of defense has a questionable plan to monitor the hormone levels of every service member over 30" (gift link).

"In aiming for a vision of fitness that avoids overemphasis on masculinity, I gravitated away from influencers and biohackers toward strong artists..."

"... who had prioritized physical strength in their daily routines.... There is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who in her book 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength' could not talk about fitness without also talking about her private history of romantic relationships and the role exercise played in managing stress and quashing depression.... The novelist Laura van den Berg turned to boxing to combat destructive anxiety patterns.... And I spoke with the poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how running... was about stress relief and managing clinical depression... In a recent interview with Haruki Murakami, the singer Harry Styles credited Mr. Murakami’s book on running with freeing him 'from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.'... These artists weren’t going on about perfect blood panels or maximum efficiency or tracking immense protein intake. They cared about feeling alive in their bodies, sleeping well and having the stamina to do meaningful work.... Rather than follow the voice of one supposed strongman, rattling off advice, I learned to favor a chorus...."

Writes Sebastian Langdell, a professor of medieval literature, in "Men Need Better Fitness Role Models" (NYT).

Langdell is rejecting the "fitness bros." He names a few of them — Peter Attia, Tim Ferriss, Andrew Huberman — so aren't the bros, too, a "chorus"? The distinction is not between a "chorus" and "one supposed strongman" but between the practical rules you ought to follow to achieve better fitness and the psychological motivation to pursue it. I don't see why the "chorus" wouldn't include both voices. Even if you feel inspired by Harry and Haruki and Hanif to go running, you'd still want to know if running long or short and fast or slow is more beneficial to your body and your mind.

McDreamy.

From "Here Are the Maine Democrats Who Might Replace Graham Platner/Mr. Platner has not yet withdrawn from the race after a rape allegation, but Democrats in the state and nationally are already exploring potential alternatives" (NYT):

Platner was presented by the Democrats as fulfilling the people's supposed longing for masculinity, so, yeah, replace him with Patrick Dempsey. That makes sense.

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"A wave of prominent Democrats, from Platner’s most progressive allies to top Democratic leadership, are bailing on his Senate campaign..."

"... after POLITICO reported that a woman who dated him said he forced her to have sex with him.... On Monday night — just hours after the story published — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Platner to 'immediately withdraw'.... Some of his biggest backers — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — called on him to exit the race, as did Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Another staunch supporter and potential 2028 presidential hopeful, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, withdrew his endorsement.... Meanwhile, one of Platner’s most prominent Senate backers, Bernie Sanders, has yet to comment on the news...."

Politico reports.

Platner "represented masculinity" for the Democrats:

 

Graham Platner (D) on NPR one month ago: "I represent healthy masculinity"

This did not age well 😬 pic.twitter.com/T3bEvgvdm5

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2026

"[S]o much of what I see online and so much of what I hear women say is, 'Men are trash.'"

Says Nadja Spiegelman in "America Has a Masculinity Crisis/A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today" (NYT).

She continues: "Sabrina Carpenter said that the key to her songwriting is just to call men stupid in as many ways as you can. I really understand where women’s anger comes from. I have lived it. But I also feel so much tenderness for my brother, for other men I know. And if I were hearing the same kinds of messages in reverse that were just, 'Women are trash,' I wouldn’t know how to begin to approach the world. And so I wonder how — specifically on the left, because I think that there are different answers to this on the right — specifically on the left, which is where I hear men are trashed the most loudly, what effect is this having on boys? Do they hear it? Do they feel it? Is it empowering for women? Is there another way to approach this?"

"The Trump administration’s spotlight on testosterone and its increasing availability through online clinics come at a time when exaggerated, uncompromising, even aggressive masculinity is in vogue..."

"... in Hollywood and online in the so-called manosphere. Wildly popular figures like Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman have spoken about their own use of T.R.T., framing it as a medical treatment for aging. But many influencers go much further, amplifying the message that being 'low T' is synonymous with low status, weakness and sexual inadequacy — and often profiting off promotional links to T.R.T. clinics, or even starting their own. That message seems to be reaching younger men in particular. Clavicular, the 20-year-old streamer who popularized the 'looksmaxxing' subculture, which casts the relentless pursuit of physical attractiveness as the clearest route to social capital, has said that he started using testosterone at age 14 to achieve 'a more dimorphic look.'..."

From "Why So Many Men Are Obsessed With Testosterone/From the Trump administration to online influencers, the hormone is increasingly seen as the key to achieving a new male ideal" (NYT)(gift link).

"Filming for the third season of Smatouha Minni (You Heard It From Me), a feminist series in Arabic, the actor is in a padded muscle suit, wearing a slicked-back black wig and beard."

"'If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her,' the Palestinian-Jordanian barks, mimicking an aggrieved self-help podcaster. An hour later, she is slouched in a hoodie, shisha pipe in one hand and a gaming console in the other, shouting: 'Mama, I’m hungry. Can you make me a sandwich?' The sketches are parodies of a misogynist narrative gaining traction in the region. 'Patriarchal attitudes have always existed,' says Amanda Abou Abdallah, the Lebanese founder, co-writer and director of Smatouha Minni. 'But what we’re seeing now is a re-intensification – a backlash against women’s growing participation, independence and public voice, especially online.' Chief among the ideologies circulating is the so-called 'red pill' theory, popularised by figures such as Andrew Tate, whose influence in the region intensified after his conversion to Islam in late 2022. The doctrine frames men as victims of a feminist, 'gynocentric; social order and urges them to reclaim power through dominance...."

 From "'If your wife asks you to change diapers, change your wife': the Arabic hit show that parodies the patriarchy/The female-created YouTube sketch series Smatouha Minni – You Heard It From Me – uses satire to confront misogynistic attitudes" (The Guardian).

"Do you see it? There's a group of men carrying another man out of the room. And then there's a woman... desperately reaching out...."

"I’d never questioned my gender before I came to America; growing up in India, I’d always identified as a girl."

"Of course, India has a gender hegemony of its own — one I arguably benefitted from in many ways and suffered from in others. I am upper-caste, upper-class, Hindu, and also a Tamil woman who didn’t look like the models in the Fair & Lovely commercials. I was the only Tamilian in most rooms I was in, a fact my North Indian classmates consistently reminded me of. Still, the popular conception of what a woman or a man was felt more fluid. I grew up among Sikh women who didn’t tame their body hair, men who would hold hands platonically with their male friends, and children who cross-dressed for play (almost every boy had a photo of himself dressed up as a girl by his mother for fun).... [And there] is our third-gender community, or hijras, as they are commonly known...."

Writes Supriya Ganesh,  "My Strange Dysphoria/Growing up in India, I never questioned my gender. When I moved to the U.S. at 18, I began to feel disconnected from my body" (New York Magazine).

"The Trump administration has urged professional football’s leaders to induct Theodore Roosevelt into the sport’s hall of fame..."

"... with one top official predicting it will happen within the year.... [Historians and sports experts have said [Theodore] Roosevelt played a crucial role by forcing a national conversation around football safety, rather than leaving it to factions that could not agree on next steps. Edward O’Keefe, the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library pointed to some of the specific changes to football that resulted from Roosevelt’s interventions. 'He helped invent the forward pass,' said O'Keefe. 'He made some of the first safety measures that continue to make the game possible today.'"

From "Trump officials push Theodore Roosevelt for Pro Football Hall of Fame/'I think we’re going to see Theodore Roosevelt inducted,' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at an event on Thursday" (WaPo).

I went looking in Edmund Morris's "Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" for some meatier material about TR and football. I found this on page 598:

“What matters a few broken bones to the glories of inter-collegiate sport?” he cried at a Harvard Club dinner. (Meanwhile, not far away in hospital, the latest victim of football savagery lay paralyzed for life.) He declared publicly that he would “disinherit” any son of his who refused to play college games. And in private, through clenched teeth: “I would rather one of them should die than have them grow up as weaklings.”

Can we talk a little bit about beauty filters?

I'm told this is Rosie O'Donnell, inviting us to "talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell. If she's actually ready to get serious about the interests of women, why is she presenting herself like this?

Rosie O’Donnell speaks out about her past support for Eric Swalwell.

“It’s heartbreaking to me. And I wrote him a little message. And I said ‘Bill Clinton broke my heart and you did too.’ The conclusion I’ve come to- men suck.” pic.twitter.com/QP1nBuQDUc

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 16, 2026

She's used some kind of filter that makes her look like a little girl. That actually fits the substance. She's posing as an innocent girl whose "heart" was broken when men she supported revealed themselves to be abusers of women. She wants us to be angry at them because they hurt her — they broke her heart. First Clinton and now Swalwell. Her conclusion is babyish: "Men suck." 

Then she takes on a believe-the-science attitude: "The way that [men] are physiologically, they can't, sort of, control their sexual urges." After saying that, she touches her nose and cheek in a way that makes me think she knows she's bullshitting.

Notice that it's basically the same bullshit theory we were talking about 2 days ago in "The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."  That post title is a quote from a NYT column. The columnist, Michelle Cottle did not detail this "built differently" hypothesis, so I paraphrased it: "the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women."

"The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."

Writes Michelle Cottle, in "How Many People Heard About Swalwell and Did Nothing?" (NYT).

Cottle does not delve into this "built differently" hypothesis or the reasons why people believe it and choose to condone bad behavior. She seems to hope to light a fire under these weaker people and motivate them to oppose the "powerful, ambitious men" who — supposedly — are fueled by sexual desire. 

Maybe she doesn't delve into the hypothesis because she thinks it's true and self-evident. Maybe she's too puritanical to open up the subject. "Built differently." Say it clearly and explicitly. When I was a child, circa 1960, I asked my mother how babies were born. That was long ago, but I remember her answer verbatim: "Well, you know how men and women are built differently."

Can we please grow up and say it bluntly? There's no reason to be polite here. Powerful, ambitious men are built differently... the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women. We're diminishing ourselves if we filter out the men who have it. Look at JFK. Look at Trump. And by the way, it's also the reason why none of the women are truly great political leaders.

That's not my personal belief. That's the hypothesis Cottle gestures at, and I'm just putting it bluntly. Maybe you can put it more bluntly, so I'll turn the conversation over to you.

"[A]s Vice President JD Vance took a podium in Pakistan and said no deal had been reached had been reached to end the war in Iran... President Trump... was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure...."

"People mostly circulated around him, checking in with updates and then leaving again. For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him...."

Writes Katie Rogers, "Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed On his way to Florida, President Trump said it did not matter to him if a deal with Iran was reached or not: 'We win, regardless,' he said" (NYT).

Blood and saliva — I've got tags for both of those.

Trump was "surrounded." People "circulated around him." When you're a star, you can't grab what orbits around you: