Part of me is absolutely terrified of learning who the Hell asks him this stuff.

Fetusphobes. White preservationists. Stealth sharks. Wingnut grudge match. And wingnut petri dish. Trotting out. (Or maybe, “Define “failure”?) Prank. Indispensably Devalued. Manly men (illustrated)….

And Yazee: NO one said he was evil. Just creepy.

Not synonymous.

Yaz-per

It’s like flies to sh-, er, rubbish. You see a grown man writing about half-naked 14-year-old boyz, who then implies that this is the road to moral victory, and you simply HAVE to make bizarre rants. Otherwise, your head explodes from the sheer hypocrisy of it all.

So, he’s obviously not talking about the ‘mix’ known to women. Nor is he saying there is not such a mix known to women.

No, that’s not what this sentence says at all. What the sentence says is
“It {vague reference} is about an odd mix [of the seemingly contradictory experiences of pleasure and pain] [that is] known only to men.

I could diagram it for you if I had graphics, but that’s what it says.
He neither states nor implies that there is one such mix for men and another such mix for women.
He also implies that wrestling (and some other sports, perhaps) are the only places this feeling can be found. We beg to differ.

My overall problem with this article is that it is poorly composed and not well thought out. It encompasses far too many topics to be coherent. The thesis could have been any of the following:

1) “Sports, particular team sports, builds character in teenageed boys.”
2) “Men have an instinctive need to protect women, and I feel that allowing women in combat goes against–and perhaps subverts–that instinct.”
3) “My nephew and his wrestling team are fine examples of my ideal of manliness.”
4) “I am afraid that our current culture of self-absorbed materialism will leave the next generation ill-prepared to defend themselves against a committed, self-sacrificing enemy.”
5) “In times of danger, we as a society instinctively turn to the Alpha Male to protect us. We need to cultivate the next generation of this Alpha Male, and we are not doing it.”
6) “Competitive sports contain an odd mix of the primal experiences of pleasure and pain.”

Any single one of these would have been a thesis worthy of an entire article. By using all of them together to support his thesis (I’m not sure what his thesis actually is: “Men rock!” maybe?), he leaves the poor reader confused, unenlightened, and perhaps bit dazed by some unwieldy turns of phrase (“So let’s face it, it’s still up to young men to protect us, as well as other young men who will lead them.” What does this mean? Who are these other young men? Are they not involved in sports, too?).

It doesn’t matter if the writer is a great father and wonderful husband: none of this improves the article any.

In the comments to this thread, a reader asks: Ok, I seriously don’t understand the hate for Instapundit. Like many blogs out there, I don’t agree with everything said on it, but by and large it is one of the…

This is a comedy site. His article was funny to the fans of this site. He’s a grown man talking about high school wrestling, which obviously has comedic value if we are still all on here talking about it. I called him creepy, and whatever, maybe he isn’t creepy. I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman and doesn’t like to grapple sweaty boys, he just likes to watch them grapple each other. Fair enough.

Some people may have been put off by his curious views on gender issues or by his back-handed slaps at liberals, but really, I enjoyed the article because it is just funny to visualize the guy in his shirt and tie in the stands of some half-empty high school arena eating nachos and watching boys wrestle.

An “odd mix known only to men.”

So, he’s obviously not talking about the ‘mix’ known to women. Nor is he saying there is not such a mix known to women.
It’s an ‘odd’ mix known to men that he is being specific about. That doensn’t mean he believes women don’t experience primal pleasure and suffering. He’s talking about the mix known only to men.
How can that be seen as something that infers female inferiority?
This guy is not being given a fair shake here.
So many of you seem to hate him because of his position about what he believes it takes to physically fight “terra”.
He’s not talking about “intelligence” or “ballet”.
He’s talking about combat. and I think he’s talking about the qualities of maleness.
Just like there are female qualities. There are male qualities.
I think.
Unless I’m missing something here.

The Yaz-per

Not to mention ballet. (I’m serious. Ballet’s top of my list for “This is killing me, but in a good way.” Young Thomas has clearly never guessed at the fierceness of the competition for Bloodiest Toes when the pointe shoes come off in the changing room afterwards.)

And Eric in Hiroshima – too right. Best weapon against terrorism, at least the actual rather than imaginary kind, is intelligence. I guess fantasising about people of either sex engaging in intelligence work just doesn’t do it for Thomas.

The bizarre rantings are completely rational and I’ll explain them to you in this very sentence (especially particularly most definitely in this very sentence).

*my head explodes*

Knife to a gunfight, dude. I’ll respond a little later. There are so. Many. Reasons.

Of course, none of that is as difficult as sitting in an air-conditioned office shitting bad columns through your fingertips…