What kind of man
“America’s Dad” has been selected to run for vice president alongside Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Walz is a plain-spoken veteran. He is a football coach and a hunter. He is a product of midwestern state university systems. Democrats seem thrilled to have a candidate who checks all the boxes for traditionally masculine characteristics the party has been accused of eschewing in favor of elitist, effete, modern men who — critics claim — project weakness on the world stage and demonize men here at home.
Ironically, the outpouring of affection for Walz — from all corners of his party — is a demonstration that masculinity isn’t, in fact, under attack — and perhaps it never has been. It’s only a certain kind of masculinity that has come under fire. The kind that promotes aggression and tolerates bullies. The kind that suggests men should suffer in silence. The kind that prevents men from asking for help. The kind that keeps men from expressing normal, healthy emotions. The kind that encourages men to dominate others in all relationships, professional and personal. The kind that exploits others for power and then uses that power for personal gain.
Scott Galloway has been writing and speaking about the multivariate crises facing middle class men in this country for years. Life expectancy is down, inequality is up, and the middle class is struggling. Our young men, in particular, are failing, and we are failing them. The statistics are alarming. Boys start school less prepared than girls, and they’re less likely to graduate. As they fall behind, young men become increasingly isolated and lonely. One in seven men reports having no friends, and three of every four deaths from suicide and drug overdoses are men.
Galloway traces this crisis to an absence of healthy male role models for boys. Fewer than one in four teachers in America are men, down from one in three in 1980. And it’s a vicious cycle. The fewer male teachers that boys see, the less interested they are in becoming teachers themselves. Even more dramatically, fewer than one in five pediatricians are men, compared to 55% in the late-1980s. Men are leaving fields that place a high value on traits considered feminine, and society reciprocates with lower pay.
Ricky Creed was my high school swim coach. Just out of college, he looked barely old enough to be taken seriously as our coach, but he was also young enough for us to feel understood. I swam because I loved it, but I competed to be respected, to prove my own masculinity. He knew the kind of support I needed and the kind of encouragement I responded to. He felt like my biggest fan. At our county championship meet my senior year, he told me he broke a bone in his hand pounding on the pool deck as I shattered my personal best to win the 200-yard individual medley, beating out the first seed by a full four seconds. That year, at our annual swim banquet, he named me the season’s Most Valuable Swimmer. I was completely shocked and overwhelmed. When I told him how I felt, he said simply, “Who else would it be?”
Lacking male examples of strength and kindness — not to mention integrity, morality, and responsibility — in mentoring and nurturing roles, young men look elsewhere. Many flock to internet blogs, online forums, and chat rooms, where they find the likes of Adin Ross, Andrew Tate, and other stars of the alt-right manosphere, espousing views of hypermasculinity, antifeminism, misandry, and misogyny. Tate himself is facing criminal charges of sex trafficking, sexual aggression, and rape. Such charges seem harder to fight when you are a self-proclaimed pimp.
More than half the Trump coalition is comprised of non-college-educated white voters (and Trump’s coalition is 85 percent white overall). Trump sees even more potential among the angry young followers of Tate and Ross and is leaning into this demographic. Last week, Trump appeared on 23-year-old Ross’ Kick stream, walking out to 50 Cent’s “Many Men.” Trump was appreciative of the opportunity to stoke grievance among these disaffected young men. “I love having a young audience… it’s about the American dream. Right now, you don’t have the American dream,” griped Trump.
The past three presidential elections, at least, have been posited as referenda on masculinity, beginning with Trump’s campaign against the first woman to run for president. But it’s not only Trump. Manhood and masculinity are broadly included among Republican’s weird fixations.
For the GOP, the denigration of traditional masculinity is symptomatic of so much else that has been lost. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, perhaps best known for fleeing a mob he helped create, wrote a book entitled “Manhood,” in which he links the country’s survival to the preservation of certain Christian masculine virtues. Tucker Carlson released a documentary entitled “The End of Men.” Its central premise is that our society has literally drained the testosterone levels of American men, and as a result, America itself is weaker. Both men target strange right-wing targets like “Epicurean liberalism” and “soy globalism.”
Galloway also writes about masculinity and, to a different degree, believes it has received a bum rap. He frames masculinity as a societal construct based on the norms and behaviors we expect from boys and men. Those norms and behaviors, however, can take many forms. Some positive, some not so positive. But like a superhero’s powers, masculinity has the power to be a force for good. For Galloway, that means exerting one’s strength, power, and influence to protect and advocate for others.
My college swim coach, Carl Samuelson, was older and wiser than Coach Creed, but he was equally kind and generous. If Coach Creed was the older brother I never had, Coach Sam was the gentle, loving father figure I longed for. Sam also understood me. He didn’t beat me up over disappointing dual meet performances. He had faith in what I could deliver in the big meets. When I took gold at our New England Championships, he embraced me in a bear hug, bellowing his favorite sobriquet, “Big Beau!” And when I visit him now, he warmly regales my family with more stories about those days in the pool.
While music, movies, fiction, and other forms of pop culture have certainly promoted terrible examples of male aggression and other behaviors, they have also offered us healthier male role models. Gentle, thoughtful, righteous, patient, generous men like Atticus Finch, Virgil Tibbs, Oskar Schindler, and George Bailey, to name a few. Celebrities like John Legend, Dwayne Johnson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Even Chris Evans and Tom Holland, who seem to possess in real life some of the qualities of the superheroes they have portrayed in film.
Elite sports is offering us a fresh batch of exemplars of modern masculinity and an opportunity to reach young men hiding in the darkest corners of the internet. Michael Phelps, 23-time gold medalist, recently went public about his struggles with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Jared McCain, former Duke basketball star and now Philadelphia 76er, made news for painting his nails and dancing on TikTok. He told his critics to focus on his basketball. Heisman trophy winner and USC-quarterback Caleb Williams broke the internet crying on his mother’s shoulder after USC lost a tough game that knocked the team out of the PAC-12 title race. These men have received broad support for living their own brand of modern masculinity — and being unapologetically who they are.
Just this week, Stephen Nedoroscik was celebrated as the 2024 Olympics’ Clark Kent. Not only did Nedoroscik win fans over with his gentle, unassuming manner and powerhouse performance under pressure, he then went on to show us even more about the kind of man he is when he responded to a tweet from Elmo on X.
His response has garnered 4.3M views, to date. That a young man can conjure a response to a tweet from a fictional character that can be so straightforward and so nuanced; so specific yet so universal; so tender yet so playful at the same time is absolutely the work of a superhero! Like Superman!
Lewis Birdseye was probably the first person I would ever call a true renaissance man. He was teaching high school and coaching the cross country team in Stone Mountain, Georgia with a doctorate in English from Columbia University. Many parents were deeply suspicious of him, and some labeled him a communist. He took us hiking and camping, once in the fall, again in the winter, and then whitewater rafting in the spring. He encouraged us to read and study independently, not for grades, but for knowledge. He pushed us to find that spark in ourselves and to go our own way.
At my college graduation, we were able to nominate a high school teacher who had “contributed significantly to our intellectual and personal growth” for the college’s Olmsted Prize. My submission failed to sway the jury, and my classmate’s band teacher took the prize. I later told Dr. Birdseye that I had put him up for this honor and that it was a privilege for us to have had him as a teacher. He responded, “Whatever I contributed to your lives, please understand how much you all gave to me. Teaching goes two ways. You all taught me that there was a reason to teach, that you lovely young people (try always to think of yourselves that way) would become, as you have, wonderful people.”
When I reconnected with him recently over social media, I was eager to share my writing. Instead of simply critiquing one of my essays, he took the opportunity to teach. “Edward Garnett, Joseph Conrad’s first editor,” he began, “replied to Conrad upon reading his first novel, ‘Why not try another one?’ Small encouragement you might say, but it was sufficient to redirect the Polish seaman into a career that produced some of the best literature that’s ever been written. Rather than analyze what you have written, tell you its virtues, point out an awkward phrase, let me redirect Garnett’s words to you. You write with assurance and grace sufficient to warrant another go at writing. In other words, you have a gift. Keep writing.”
This brings me back to Tim Walz. What kind of man is Tim Walz? Well, the internet has the answers:
Tim Walz holds the door. Even if you are a little too far away.
Tim Walz wants you to text when you get there.
Tim Walz noticed your new haircut.
And how does he stack up against his opponent?
Tim Walz is the guy that brings donuts to work. J.D. Vance is the guy that eats the last one and leaves the empty box on the counter.
Tim Walz is that kind of man.
I have been so fortunate to have had good men as role models in my life. Men of integrity who are naturally kind and generous. Men who use their position to promote others without self-interest. Men who protect and advocate for those with less power or status. Unfortunately, not all young men have role models like that. But I’m so hopeful that we are seeing good men like Stephen Nedoroscik and Tim Walz rise above the din of these contentious times to show us what real masculinity looks like. And more than that, they’ve shown us how it makes us feel.
“I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore and shew thyself a man.” — King David, near his death, to his son Solomon
