Over the past 50 or so years women have taken great steps to truly improve their share of what has traditionally been my pie. The female half of this nation's population is finally starting to emerge from behind the apron to become a driving force behind the booming economy and the rebirth of politics. The fairer sex is more than ever helping to steer the course of America. Still, just as women step up beside men to take an equal place, a new voice of dissension has come up, a voice which claims to represent me, the voice of the poor male.

The most recent salvo of poor male propaganda began with Ellen Joan Pollock's article "In Today's Workplace, Women Feel Freer To Be, Well, Women" which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 7th. The article implies that women in the workplace are using their feminine wiles to get ahead. Professional women on the fast track to success are wearing racy clothing in the office and flirting with the higher-ups. According to one woman quoted in the article, dressing like a slut and making kissy-face are necessary to "get your foot in the door."

Women can use their sex appeal to manipulate confused men. Sexiness gives females the advantage, a man in the article claims, and if you have an advantage you shouldn't be allowed to use it.

Homeboy say wha? What an idiotic thing to say. The fact that women must spend their work day, like escort service girls, performing various roles (e.g. playing daughter, as described in the article) for the men in the office is not a sign that women have gained the upper hand.

Pollock's article comes clean at the end with a quote from a Vice President at the Union Bank of California, making it clear that pretty young women are still just conversation pieces. According to the article, he recently closed a deal involving a man and his son, and made sure he brought along a female colleague whom "they both clearly liked". Said the veep, "If it helps them to be more comfortable, and being more comfortable makes them more open to what we're going to say, I'm going to use it in a heartbeat." Pretty women can get ahead, as long as all they try to be is pretty women.

On the 18th the WSJ printed Nicholas von Hoffman's article "A Nation of Sweetie Pies". Ostensibly lamenting the lack of negative politics in the current presidential campaign, von Hoffman attacked what he calls "the League of Women Voters' ethos" which has prevented politicians from attacking their political rivals with stunning invective. For von Hoffman this softening of politics has "something to do with the growing place of women in politics" and "our lingering distaste at seeing members of the fairer sex sling mud and shout imprecations in public." Clearly, von Hoffman doesn't watch the mind-bogglingly popular WWF. The empowerment of women forced the "rootin' tootin' American man" into extinction, dragging down the proud males of our heritage and replacing them with "goo-goos".

JJ Lando's Spectator article on the 14th ("There's No 'Sex' In Democracy") continued this sad display of male self-pity. The article declares that the patriarchy has been reversed and men are now the primary victims of sexism. Lando goes on to portray women voters as hopelessly unaware of the issues. In fact, Lando believes that in sight of an attractive man, women lose their wits. They're so confused they vote for the cutest candidate rather than the one they agree with. For example, because women have "the tendency to be lost in his baby blues", we males were saddled with Clinton for eight years. If only we could have kept the women at home, we men would have been able to elect someone who really represented us: the face of erectile dysfunction himself, Bob Dole.

Males have a problem. We're in power, the economy is good, politics is good, we're not fighting any wars, we don't have anything to whine about. Meanwhile, the portions of our population we've been repressing has plenty to whine about. This isn't fair. We should be able to whine more than the rest. We're on top; we should get to do everything more than everyone else.

Women can complain about sexual harassment, glass ceilings, and unequal pay. Well... uh... their low-cut, tight-fitting outfits make our hearts palpitate and· you know, we have raging hormones and that we can't control. Women are manipulating us!

Women can complain that their issues aren't dealt with in national politics and that they're not being represented proportionately in Congress. Well... well· their goody-goody attitudes are taking all the fun out of campaigning and· and their chemical imbalances are causing Democrats to be elected president!