SATURDAY: The Atlantic joins the human race!

SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2026

Helen Lewis, superb again: As you may recall, it's the cover report in the June edition of The Atlantic. On the magazine's somewhat bluer than pale blue cover, the essay is described this way:

THE MEN WHO FEAR WOMEN
By HELEN LEWIS

We wrote about Lewis' essay last week. Online, it appears beneath this dual headline, and begins in the manner shown:

THE MEN WHO WANT WOMEN TO BE QUIET
A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right.

By Helen Lewis

Douglas Wilson has a modest proposal to improve American life: He wants to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote. In his ideal system, “we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure,” he told me recently. “And that is, we vote by household.”

Wilson is a co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, based in Moscow, Idaho. Over the past five decades, he has built a small empire there, dedicated to disseminating his theocratic vision for the United States: a publishing house, a school, a liberal-arts college, and a video-streaming service. His denomination, which has about 170 affiliated churches, counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a member, and Wilson was invited to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon in February. So when the pastor casually suggests disenfranchising half of America, people listen.

That's the way the essay begins.

People have written about Pastor Wilson before—about the pastor whose denomination includes the perpetually furious Secretary Hegseth as a member. In her essay, Lewis goes into substantial detail, first about Pastor Wilson, but then about an array of pastors, podcasters and streamers, not excluding "a loose collection of trolls known as Groypers," all of whom are part of a burgeoning gender-based movement.

As you may recalls, Lewis is writing about a loose affiliation of millionaires and other furious men. They're sometimes said to belong to the movement she starts to describe in this passage:

Wilson is a prominent voice in what is sometimes called “masculinism”: a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men. His version is religious, influenced by the notion of male “headship” of the family and Saint Paul’s belief that godly women should “be quiet.” There are also plenty of secular masculinists, as well as nominally Muslim ones, such as the streamer Sneako, the self-proclaimed pimp Andrew Tate, and the podcaster Myron Gaines. Woman-bashing plays well on social media and sells lots of ads for crypto, sports betting, and supplements. You can make good money telling men that they’re the truly oppressed sex.

Masculinism! For ourselves, we'll go ahead and take a guess—the attitudes which Lewis goes on to describe are deeply bred in the bone. Some men are condemned to have a bit too much of the neural wiring which inspires them to loathe women in a significant way.  

The chemicals float around in their brains, perhaps in slightly excessive volume. Such men are thereby inspired to a dimwitted loathing they may find it hard to quit.

The invention of podcasts and similar technologies have helped these afflicted parties find each other and become angrier still. They may end up going on the Fox News Channel and offering ugly insults posing as jokes—such self-revelations as this:

And finally, the New World screwworm, which eats animals from the inside out, has been finally found in America, inside a cow. 

Scientists say this is just the latest of many reasons to avoid sex with Joy Behar. 

[PHOTO of Joy Behar]

AUDIENCE: Cheering, applause

The manifest nutcase who offered that musing never tires of the joy of comparing Behar to cows—or, perhaps, to horses, cattle, pigs and dogs, or once in a while to "livestock." He himself would never have sex with such an animal! 

(For the record, there would be a substantial age difference. Believe it or not, the pitiful boy who offered that quip is 61 years old! Behar, with whom he would never have sex, is 83 as we speak. Adjusting for age, and considering the norms of the culture, she looks amazingly good.)

At any rate, he would never have sex with that cow! Moments earlier, he had pleasured viewers with a joke in which (brace for punchline) he said that Ted Danson "will continue to apologize to his penis for ever having sex with Whoopi Goldberg"—and yes, that's what he said.

This is pretty much all he has. In fairness, he didn't invent the brain chemistry, the chemical torrent, which leads some men, even today, to succumb to such acts of loathing—such acts of self-portrayal.

The pitiful fellow who offered those "jokes" is part of the Fox News Channel's dimwitted duo—the pitiful pair who seem to be pushing the wonders of masculinism for that corporate "cable news" outfit.

The woman who runs that "cable news" messaging enterprise pays him $9 million per year to do this every night. As he does, the women who are paid by the Fox News Channel to serve as his co-hosts or as his panelists stare politely off into air, or in some cases choose to join in.

When Lewis' cover essay appeared, we were disappointed by its failure to cite the pair of "cable news" stars who work this beat at Fox. As of yesterday, Lewis is back with a related report from the world of this gender-based societal backlash.  

Lewis' work has long been superb. Within the boundaries of American journalism, her work is as good as it gets—and then some.

Finally, it was Lewis unbound! Dual headline included, her new report starts as shown:

The Republicans Who Impugn Talarico’s Manhood

Attacks on the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas show the GOP’s narrow, anxious definition of masculinity.

By Helen Lewis

The attacks on James Talarico have not been subtle. In the weeks since the 37-year-old state representative won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Texas, Republicans have been describing him as “Low-T Talarico,” “James Talafreako,” and “Six-Gender Jimmy.” On May 28, the White House immigration czar Stephen Miller said on Fox News that it was “brave, courageous, that the Democratic Party would choose Texas, of all places, to nominate their first transgender Senate candidate.”

The Republicans have long marketed themselves as the manlier party, but the anti-Talarico blitzkrieg is both obviously coordinated and unusually overt. The overarching strategy here, as the Democratic presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel has previously pointed out, is to associate the entire left with being “weak and woke.” Not manly, in other words. Talarico’s aw-shucks niceness and youthful looks are reframed as the result of low testosterone, and his (admittedly mawkish and over-egged) statements of concern for gender-nonconforming children make him a “freak.” Worst of all, according to the Florida Republican Dan Weldon, Talarico looks as though he “couldn’t name a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s.” Supporters of the Republican candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, portray Democrats as wusses, cucks, soy boys who don’t follow sports. One commentator mused about whether Talarico wears “frilly underwear.”

So it goes with this continuing backlash. But good grief! Is that a reference to the Fox News Channel, right there in that opening paragraph?

Yes, it actually is! And with that, at long last, the Atlantic has chosen or has dared to join the human race. The magazine has even dared to let Lewis offer this:

Mostly, the attacks on Talarico have taken the form of 99,999 dog whistles implying that he is gay. On Fox News, Jesse Watters laughingly observed that the Democrats had rebuffed rumors that Talarico is vegan by posting photos of him “swallowing large sticks of meat.” He added: “He’s also 37 and not married.” When the New York Post confirmed that Talarico’s girlfriend exists by revealing her identity, the attack line mutated—did you know that she’s vegan? Pretty gay.   

By the way, I recommend watching the clip of Watters and [Stephen] Miller in full, because Miller has the kind of natural comic gifts that usually persuade people to forsake a career in stand-up and become a funeral director instead. Watters underlines the pathos by providing what I can describe only as live-action canned laughter. And yet, Miller must have some sense of humor, because his (vegan) roast of Talarico concluded with the assertion that the people of Texas, “some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women” in America, would never vote for “somebody with that much soy to be a U.S. senator, compared to a real conservative, patriotic, God-fearing, and truly beloved statewide figure in Ken Paxton.”

Ken Paxton? Truly beloved? Now, that’s comedy. Ken Paxton is not even truly beloved in Ken Paxton’s own party...

Astounding! The Atlantic has finally let one of its writers describe the type of braindead garbage which crowds the air at the Fox News Channel. For the clip of Watters and Miller to which she refers, Lewis links you here.

The Atlantic has thereby decided to bite the bullet and join the human race! That said, the New York Times still seems to cower in fear. So do the silent stars at MS NOW, from Rachel and Lawrence on down.

Lewis' work has long been superb. That said, our own Blue America, as a group, has never had a sexual politics. Also, our stars seem to be afraid of Fox, and they don't really seem to care. 

Gutfeld and Watters proceed in the knowledge that they can do and say whatever is pleasing. The loathing of women is undisguised, as is the baiting of those who lack the excessive volume of T which can make men so ugly, so stupid.

The Times will not report what they do. So too with our own cable stars!