This story will probably not get a ton of attention, but it strikes me as being important for the media world.

Two weeks ago I talked a little about Charlotte Allen’s excellent piece on “The New Dating Game,” the “seduction community,” etc. On further reflection, something else stands out at me from the piece: Bloggers such as Roissy spend a lot of time talking about the difference between “alpha” and “beta” men, but I think they misunderstand these types and that this misunderstanding is part of a general inability of modern culture to come to grips with what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, manliness. This could be a long digression, so feel free to check out now if the topic bores you.

The one great insight which Roissy et al have is this: Chicks dig guys who don’t particularly care about them. This isn’t a universal truth, of course, but it’s predominant enough to be reasonably treated as universal. The greatest swordsman I ever knew was a guy in high school named Tod. Tod plowed his way through dozens of girls in high school alone. Probably upwards of 30, maybe as many as 50. He was such a stud that he even bagged hot seniors when he was an underclassman, an unheard of achievement in our milieu.

Tod was a good athlete, though not exceptional; he was from a good family, though not particularly wealthy by the standards of our school. Tod’s three relevant characteristics were: (1) He was very good looking; (2) He was genuinely friendly to everybody around him, from teachers and nerds to the other cool kids; (3) He absolutely *did not care* whether or not a girl was into him. This wasn’t an act. He really didn’t give a shit. As a result, girls threw themselves at him, day and night.

(A brief aside about Tod: All of this was impressive enough, but what elevated Tod as a grandmaster was that none of the girls he plucked ever had anything bad to say about him afterwards. They all still loved him and liked being around him. My buddies would joke that watching Tod work was like being in the presence of Michelangelo. Last I heard, Tod had become a born-again Christian, gotten his doctorate in molecular biology, had kids, and was teaching college.)

Anyway, Tod was exceptional, but what made him so was his very real indifference regarding any particular girl. And that indifference is why so many guys with all-consuming interests–think skaters and surfers and pot-heads–also get a lot of girls. They’re not necessarily “alphas”–they just exhibit the core of what Roissy et al think “alpha” means.

And here’s where the question is a little more broadly interesting. What is an alpha male? We can start with what alpha-ness isn’t: It isn’t simply money or power. Those are effects, not causes. Ted Turner and Dan Snyder, for instance, are both very rich dudes. Turner, if you’ve ever seen him up-close, is probably an alpha. Snyder probably is not. American presidents are the most powerful men in the world. Ronald Reagan was probably an alpha. Jimmy Carter probably was not.

Likewise the ability to bag a lot of girls. Some of the Roissy et al group might actually be alphas, but the ability to score isn’t the definition of alpha-ness. The key mistake Roissy et al make, I think, is believing that alpha status has anything to do with women. Just the opposite: What makes alphas different is their ability to relate to other men. And if we had to come up with a one-sentence descriptor of what makes an alpha male, I’d argue that this is as good as anything:

An alpha male is a man with the ability to convince other men to follow him into battle.

Presence, command, authority–the alpha qualities are charismatic. That makes them hard to define. But in general, you know one when you see one. I doubt very much that you’ll find all that many alphas in an Adams Morgan club on a Saturday night. You can find them by the dozen down on the Marine base at Quantico, though.

Alphas aren’t exclusive to the martial life. Pope John Paul was almost certainly an alpha (if that’s not heretical to say). Laird Hamilton is a an alpha, as are lots of other high-level athletes (particularly in team sports–think Tom Brady). Some businessmen are (the aforementioned Turner and Steve Jobs both come to mind). Everybody has probably met a man here or there, even from ordinary walks of life, who exudes competence and inspires trust. That’s what makes an alpha. And alphas are the archetypes of manliness.

There has been a general diminution of manliness in the last 40 years or so. Some of it lamentable, some of it not. (To pick just two writings on the topic, here and here.) A large part of this cultural shift is the byproduct of the feminization of America. (I use this term descriptively, not pejoratively; again, some of the feminization has been lamentable, some has not). But when even devil-may-car men who revel in their indifference to polite society (such as Roissy et al) begin to mistake effect for cause and to misunderstand what the real markers of manliness are. Well, that suggests that manliness hasn’t just been diminished, but has been somewhat perverted, too.

Update: Galley Friend C.L. says he would define alpha male thusly, “an alpha is one to whom other men naturally defer, or against whom, in a head-to-head contest, other men will usually back down.”

I’ve long believed that Michael Kinsley was the least-gracious guy in journalism. Well Andrew Sullivan wants a shot at the title. The Atlantic has redesigned its website and Sullivan doesn’t like it. Not one bit. So he’s made his criticisms public.

To be this insulting not only to the people you work for, but work with . . . it’s just breathtaking. At this point, David Bradley must be like some kind of battered wife.

You don’t understand what it’s like with Andrew when it’s just the two of us alone together–he’s so smart and counterintuitive. When he shreds the magazine’s credibility and pisses all over those other drones . . . that’s as much my fault as it it his. I should have asked him about the redesign first. I should have made him a bigger part of the long-range planning of the institution. That’s why he lashed out like that. If only I could really prove to him how much I love him, then everything would be perfect. Oh God! I just realized we took the green away! Now the Islamic Republic of Iran will never fall and it’ll be my fault. He’s going to be so mad. Maybe I could stay with my sister . . .

Galley Friend Joel Engel has started up an excellent blog over at the LA Times: The Death of Common Sense. Today he writes about taxes and the L.A. Dodgers:

Sometime this spring or summer, when you’re drinking a $20 beer at Dodger Stadium surrounded by the fortysomething-thousand fans who attend every game (for seven innings) at $15 per carload regardless of how mediocre the home team is, ponder for a moment that every single one of you (who is still employed) had more money withheld from just your last paycheck than the owners of the ballpark and team have paid in taxes over the last four years on reported income of $108 million.

Excellent stuff.

Unless you’re deep into the Whedonverse, you probably don’t know who Felicia Day is. She’s a nifty little actress and although she’s not Tricia Helfer, she’s beautiful in the way that most Hollywood actresses are, which is to say very. For instance:

Simple enough. Except that there’s this little nugget from her blog, where she talks about taping an episode of Whedon’s Dollhouse:

Fortunately I have been friendly with everyone on Dollhouse before shooting this episode, so it was very comfortable, being on set. Working with Zone again was very easy, because between Epitaph One and Two (cute fact) we’ve played D&D together every weekend! He randomly knows my DM, so when I walked in one day, he was sitting at the table ready to play.

What’s Elvish for awesome?

If both Jon Chait and Ezra Klein are talking about the healthcare “narrative” within hours of one another, then the JournoList must have finally reached consensus on the most important political aspect of the healthcare issue: Is it better to pass an unpopular bill, or to fail to pass an unpopular bill? As usual, peoples’ analysis tends to dovetail nicely with their personal preferences. How convenient!

That said, the question isn’t ridiculous. I just think the parties involved are approaching it from different perspective. Let’s frame it in a different way:

A husband makes a pass at a woman who isn’t his wife. He winds up not following through with the flirtation. His wife finds out anyway. Imagine how unhappy she might be. Now, would she be more unhappy if, instead, she found out that her husband had actually gone through with the affair? Or would her unhappiness be about the same?

That’s the lens through which the politicians involved have to approach their decision. And I think that in most instances the wife (ie, the voters) would be more upset if her hubby actually nailed Tiffany from accounting (that trollop!) than if she learned that he merely made a sloppy pass at the office holiday party.

The problem, I think, is that a lot of the non-elected people on the left are viewing this not from the wife’s perspective, but from the husband’s. In other words, instead of thinking about the question as framed above, they’re thinking about it this way:

A husband makes a pass at a woman who isn’t his wife. He immediately realizes that, for whatever reason, he isn’t going to be able to keep this quiet and his wife is going to be pissed. Envisioning all the trouble he’s likely to be in come morning, he thinks to himself, “Jeez, if I’m going to get Elin-ed, I might as well earn it . . .”

That’s fine so far as it goes. The problem is that while political opinion writers have the luxury of thinking like the husband, elected officials, by necessity, tend to think like the wife.

Academic freedom does not extend to discussion of facts a sheriff does not like being discussed.