John McCain is running for sissy in chief
In his new book, John Strausbaugh claims everyone in America has been "sissified," including the 2008 presidential contenders.
By Vincent Rossmeier
Feb. 14, 2008 | John Strausbaugh admits that his latest book was written as an act of provocation. In Sissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps and Stoopits," a former editor at the New York Press who is now a frequent contributor to the New York Times argues that creeping "sissitude" has rendered Americans incapable of thinking for themselves or acting as individuals. Shooting from both hips, Strausbaugh assails both political parties, most of the 2008 presidential candidates, the obese, global warming activists, people who use iPods, religious fundamentalists, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. The provocation seems to have worked, if the fight that nearly broke out in the audience at a recent "Sissy Nation" reading broadcast by C-SPAN is any measure. Recently, Salon asked Strausbaugh to explain how and why everyone in America became a sissy. The interview was conducted, sissy fashion, by telephone.
What happened at the C-SPAN reading? A fight broke out?
It was fun. There was a guy there, clearly not digging my stuff, which is great, you always want to have at least one heckler in the audience to liven things up. And he stood up and he was speaking his mind, which I thought was pretty un-sissy of him actually, but somebody else was like, "Oh, shut up," and they started going back and forth ... But in the end, we were all sissies and there wasn't a fight.
The term "sissy" is usually used in relation to homosexuals and women. "Sissy Nation" sounds like a book about hyper-masculinity. Why did you choose that title?
That's specifically why I did it. I thought of a lot of different ways to put it and I knew that the title was going to offend a lot of people and turn off a lot of people because they thought somehow I was making fun of women or gay males. But part of it, I don't think it's so bad to offend people. I don't think it's so bad to push their outrage buttons. We have slid into a situation where our public discourse is so excruciatingly polite and euphemistic that we avoid saying anything. So once in a while just to pop off is not such a bad thing. And then it gave me the opportunity to say this isn't a book about gay men. This is about our loss of spine and guts. It has nothing to do with bulging biceps. I'm certainly not saying women are specifically sissies. So it gave me the opportunity to take that old term and turn it on its head, which is a rhetorical trick.
What makes the United States a "Sissy Nation"?
We have become a sissy culture. I don't mean sissy in the old style of manly man vs. girly man or male vs. female or big guy vs. little guy. Sissy doesn't have anything to do in my definition with your biceps. It's got to do with your brains and your commitment and your conviction and your ability to stand up as an individual. We've become, I think, a herd of Holsteins. Soft, lazy, stupid, knee-jerk, head-bobbing, fundamentalist, high-brained, less-than-human humans now. We're becoming that way. We're not all uniformly and thoroughly sissified yet, but we're working on it. The book is to raise my hand and say this is kind of a problem and we need to think about this. I think the genius about the American experiment in democracy is to create this social environment where each and every one of us has the opportunity as individuals to achieve what we can, to be as happy as we can, to live as fulfilled a life as we can, and we're getting away from that by identifying ourselves by which pack of Holsteins we have to be members of.
How about the people running for president right now? Is Barack Obama a sissy? Is Hillary Clinton a sissy?
We all swim in this sea of sissitude, and so none of us is unaffected by it. I've been watching the primaries and it strikes me, on both sides, as sissy candidates for a Sissy Nation. I remember a time that when you were running for president, you were relatively a larger-than-life character. You may have been an enormous scoundrel or an enormous idiot, but you were enormous. You were much larger than life. And these folks, Huckabee looks like he's the type of guy you'd go into a Pep Boys to buy two radial tires from and he'd sell you four because he's such a nice guy. Hillary just seems like a corporate lawyer. Barack Obama seems like a really nice guy, like your high school class president, but none of them seem like large characters, none of them seem to have large visions. The ones who do seem to have some vision, actually, are the outsiders, who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere. The Ron Pauls and the Kucinichs. And I always like those sort of characters because, since they know they're not going to win and they're just running to get their ideas out there, they don't grovel for our votes, they don't lie to us, they tell us what they think, because they know they're not going to win anyway.
John McCain was a prisoner of war and survived torture. Is he a sissy?
He's clearly been through stuff that an awful lot of the rest of us can't even imagine, so you got to give him that. But to me, it's not as important whether any of them are personally sissies, because I don't know [McCain], I don't know Hillary, and I don't know Barack. It's about whether they play sissy politics as usual. I wrote them all a letter and we sent them all a copy of the book, not that I expect any of them to actually read it. What I say to them, whoever you are, basically it'd be great, being such a public figure, if you'd provide us an example of un-sissitude. We don't need you to lead us out of our sissitude, but we could use some good examples. In the end you'd be doing us a better service that way than by wooing our votes for sissy in chief.
What exactly are sissy politics?
Politics has become almost entirely a politics of things that we fear, things that make us anxious, so it's illegal aliens, it's war, it's terrorism, you know, I can't afford my taxes, it's healthcare, which I think is used more as a scare tactic than some socialized medicine vision of the future. And none of them, with the possible exception of Obama, because he does give good speeches, are inspiring us to take charge of our own lives, our own happiness, our own fulfillment, our own sort of being the best human being each one of us can be. I'm not saying that politicians have ever encouraged us to do that. But I think we have gotten to such a low point in our sissitude that we could really use someone to encourage us to think for ourselves.
