by Taki Theodoracopulos
This article frst appeared in th Spring 2011 issue of the Quarterly Review and is reproduced in Manner of Man Magazine with the written consent of Quarterly Review.
Around thirty years ago I wrote an essay for the American Spectator titled “American Women Are Lousy Lovers”. It had nothing to do with the sex act, or the ability of American women to perform well in the sack – rather the lack of sensuality in feminists like Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan and other uglies of their ilk. The shrillness of their rhetoric being matched only by their lack of femininity was the theme. In no time a TV producer for the Phil Donahue Show was on the line (Donahue was the Oprah of his time, based in Chicago) inviting me to the show. It was summer, I was on my boat in Greece, and the last thing I wanted to do was to fly to humid Chicago and face a bunch of ugly American women screaming for my scalp. (Why is it that one never sees beautiful women protesting or screaming insults?) But the producer insisted, agreed to all my terms, plus a hefty under-the-table bribe, and off I was Chicago-bound.
“American women make ugly lovers,” yelled Phil into his mike as I sat alone on a tripod in a vast stage, “and this man wrote it” screamed Phil while the totally female audience rose to their feet and booed. I will not bore you with the details except that by the end the same audience stood up and cheered me, having booed Donahue non-stop once I had had my say.
In brief, what I said was that we Europeans are real men. We put our wives on a pedestal. Some of us cheat on them non-stop, but we also provide for them, protect them and never leave them for a younger model. “By the way, Phil” I asked him early on, “didn’t you leave the mother of your four children for a young bimbo recently, one Marlo Thomas?” “You bastard, how dare you?” hissed Donahue during a commercial. (We were on live for one hour and thirty minutes.) ” “Fuck you, Phil,” said poor little me. Needless to say, the audience’s median age was over fifty and their sympathies were with a gallant European such as myself, ready to cheat but never, ever, leave his wife.
Donahue refused to shake hands at the end and I flew back to Greece first class, compliments of his show. Oh yes, I almost forgot – on the way out, with the female producer apologizing profusely because Donahue had blown his cool, a tiny old lady came up and said, “I’m with you all the way…” The producer asked me if I knew who the lady was. I hadn’t a clue. “It’s Lana Turner,” said
my friend. Poor old Lana – she had worked all her life and had seen her hardearned cash disappear after taking advice from various gigolo-lovers. She was in real need for a provider-husband, and said so.
Which brings me to the subject at hand. What is a real man, anyway? Or, whatever happened to real men? Well, according to the great Greek philosopher Taki, they don’t make men like they used to. When my daughter was born thirty-five years ago I was in Palm Beach playing tennis. I flew to New York and got to the hospital just in time to see the baby cleaned up and presentable. The nurse thought I was a pig for not having been present at the birth. I told her I was not American. She looked really peeved. But the mother of my children was very happy I missed the rather awkward scene. I dread to think what I would go through today if the same thing happened.
The world has changed. Our cultural and moral decay are due to the breakdown of marriage, the decline of the church and the influence of feminism. Men today are afraid to say what they think, to stand up for their beliefs, to fight for their rights. One of the worst inventions of the 20th century is political correctness. PC is a persistent form of untruthfulness; it means adjusting what you say to what you think you ought to be saying, not what you actually know is true. It has forced a generation of males to keep their masculinity under wraps, and has made millions of men too timid to admit their real views about the world. Macho is no longer cool – according to PC, that is.
Even the concept of a hero is not politically correct. Equality and uniformity is to be treasured above the outstanding. The great heroes of yesterday are now derided as male chauvinist pigs. In his famous debate with Germaine Greer a generation ago, Norman Mailer won hands down, but was almost booed off the podium by male and female students. Mailer was painted a predator by La Greer – something he certainly was not, as he married six times and spent all his fortune paying ex-wives to be comfortable for life. The ghastly Bill Clinton was the first PC president, a manufactured phony who managed through his slickness to be loved by the fair sex. Some hero he, a physical coward who
dodged the draft but bombed a Christian country (Serbia) from 15,000 feet in order to establish a Muslim belt in the Balkans. I’d hate to see Clinton and men like him on the Titanic, when real men cheerfully gave up their places for women and children, and upper class men jovially waved goodbye as the lifeboats were being lowered leaving them behind. Clinton and his ilk would have either dressed as women or pushed the weaker sex aside to save their skins.
Heroes today do not come from the top down, as they used to. Heroes are the firemen who went in and died on 9/11, the men (and very few women) who fight in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars started by George W. Bush, a man who also dodged real fighting in Vietnam by joining the National Guard. Heroes today, or real men, are private heroes, not those overpaid, foul-mouthed sometime rapists like those playing in the Premier League, or the dope fiends of American football.
In my rather long life I have tried to be a real man by always being polite in the extreme towards women, and not taking any crap from obnoxious men no matter their size. I have stayed married to my wife for 35 years and they have been extremely happy years, at least for me – although I exercise my right to stray whenever I feel like it. I’m a male chauvinist and proud of it, but I have always put women on a pedestal, protected them and provided them the best I could, and the feminists can go to hell as far as I’m concerned – although there are those who think feminism is hell to begin with.
