Catnip to the Feminists

Any discussion of "manliness" is like catnip to the feminists. They just can't keep themselves from rushing to deplore it. Ellen Goodman is the latest to join the fray. And like Ruth Marcus, she just doesn't get it.

Apparently, feminists like Goodman and Marcus find manliness threatening. Confidence, boldness and the rest are bad, bad, bad when men display them, at least in the service of a cause that the feminists don't support.

Goodman even sinks to the level of deliberately misleading (or is embarassingly uninformed) when she writes that:

George W. Bush himself approved the leaking of classified intelligence gathered before the Iraq War. He didn't let it all leak out. He authorized a trickle of information buttressing his case that Saddam Hussein had been a nuclear threat. Information that had already been discredited.

First, President Bush didn't approve any "leak" -- he authorized the disclosure of previously classified information ("Over the weekend, an attorney involved in the case told the Associated Press that, while Mr. Bush approved declassification of the intelligence estimate, he was not aware of how Messrs. Cheney and Libby planned to dole out the information.")

Second, the information had not already been "discredited." In fact, there's more reason to be confident it was right than ever.

Is this the best Ellen Goodman can do? Seems to me that for someone condemning those who are supposedly bold and confident in the face of being wrong, she ought to take a look in the mirror before she starts casting stones.