Tom Matlack

Black on Black Tax Math

2011-10-14T14:00:19-04:00

Warren Buffet released his tax returns yesterday, confirming that he paid 17 percent federal income tax (he paid $7 million on $40 million of income), and called on other billionaires to do the same in an effort to show that the #OccupyWallStreet folks are right: the rich should pay more. President Obama is pushing his millionaire tax with no chance that it will actually become law as an election year ploy. And a pizza millionaire is leading the race for the Republican Presidential nomination on the promise that he will throw out the tax code, do away with the IRS and impose a 9 percent income, corporate, and sales tax across the board.

For the first time it's a real possibility that we will have a Presidential election pitting one African American man against another. Yet employment of black males over 20 stands at 56.9 percent (yes that means almost half don't have jobs) according to the most recent national jobs report. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 846,000 black men are in prison, making up 40.2 percent of all inmates in the system. That's more than the number of black men enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War. Isn't this a tax on manhood based on color?

And neither Obama nor Cain has made addressing racism a part of their platform.

Have we all just gone completely insane? South Africa is beginning to look like a racially progressive country compared to the United States.

Seems to me we need a Presidential candidate who is actually black, no matter what the color of his skin. And that's from a white venture capitalist that is just dying to throw out the tax code and start over.

Read More about Race from The Good Men Project

--photo with permission Stuck in customs

Are Food Stamps Manly?

2011-08-29T21:18:47-04:00

If I could ask each candidate for President a single question it would be, "Do you believe you have any moral obligation to feed the hungry in this country?"

Four years ago, 27 million Americans got food stamps. As NPR reports, today that number is 46 million. It's expected to keep climbing. One in three households in the state of Alabama get assistance buying groceries.

The program comes out to $2 per meal per person. Many of those being fed are children. Forty percent of those getting assistance have a job. They just don't make enough to put food on the table.

Still, the argument goes, giving assistance to the poor even to fight starvation is enabling their poverty. They would get a job, or a better job, if the government would get the hell out of the way.

I had a spirited conversation with a service member stationed in Afghanistan not long ago. I questioned whether Osama bin Laden had actually succeeded in getting us to fight three Middle Eastern wars we cannot possibly win, costing us trillions of dollars we don't have, and thereby cratering our economy. The courageous GI told me about all the people on the ground he and his platoon had saved. His view was that the wars could be justified on purely humanitarian grounds.

"I don't doubt that you are doing amazing work," I told him. "But how about the tens of thousands of children starving to death in Africa? Why should we let them die while we expend so much effort to attempt to instill democratic institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby saving the populace from dictatorship?"

The next line of argument was about the imminent threat of terrorism on our shores. Again, I certainly thanked him for his courage and service, but asked who had been the most dangerous terrorists in America and Europe in the last year-Muslim fundamentalist from without or those born in Arizona, Norway, and England who had gone to extremes out of frustration over inequality at home?

The conversation boiled down to a pivotal discussion about the role of government -- not abroad but right here at home. "How can we say that we shouldn't feed our starving here at home if we send soldiers like you into harms way on a humanitarian mission half way around the world? Furthermore, if spending our precious capital on wars that we might not even be able to win causes more people to lose their jobs or be unable to feed their families -- is that right?"

In the end we agreed to disagree. I can certainly respect that if your life is on the line, you really don't have the wiggle room to think too much about whether the justification is valid. You have to do what you are told. That's the patriotic thing to do.

But again, if I had one question for all the candidates for president, including President Obama, it would simply be whether or not we have a moral obligation to feed our own hungry? Is it more manly to fight wars or feed children?

The shocking thing to me is that public sentiment -- and a majority of the current crop of would be national leaders -- seem to believe that government is bad, budgets need to be cut, and that caring for our own in event the most basic way is not manly. It's enabling poor. As if they had a choice in the matter.

--

From: The Good Men Project

Photo with permission by: i5a / Flickr

The New Macho

2011-08-25T19:25:00-04:00

Men are certainly under attack from all sides at the moment -- whether it's the endless list of celebrity bad boys or the sociologists who have come to fame by pointing out the statistical impotence of men at large. Apparently males these days watch porn 50 times a week, on average, play endless video games, fail out of school and are increasingly antisocial.

Those of us with testosterone and a well-meaning heart don't have much room to maneuver. For a good number of guys in my cohort (40s, white, from supposedly forward-looking backgrounds), the double bind of manhood predates the most recent attacks. Our feminist moms told us to be just like them to be loved. For our dads, the idea of macho got lost in some encounter group somewhere (except for Burt Reynolds in "Semi-Tough," when he is supposed to piss himself during a EST conference but sneaks in a catheder flask taped to his leg as back-up, which, ironically, I have a clear memory of going to see with my dad). So we just gave up on being macho.

If there is a gender war, men have just decided to gather up their marbles and go home. Virtual sex is better than real sex with a complex woman. Hanging with the boys over a beer and watching a game is better than getting your manhood wrapped around your eardrums. "Pass me the remote," is the mantra in response to getting kicked in the nuts.

So, The Good Men Project is about encouraging men to get their mojo back, to be proud of their manliness, to see good where we have been conditioned to be ashamed of our instincts, to ultimately define a new macho that does good in the world.

♦◊♦

I am not debating the statistics about manhood. I realize that we are, in the majority, a group of Internet-obsessed masturbators with deep-seated emotional issues. I'm proud to be a member of that group.

No, my issue is that we collectively, male and female, are obsessed with the worst of the worst when it comes to men rather than the best of the best. An 18-year-old kid gets drunk and does something stupid and disgusting, but frankly no more stupid or disgusting than I did drunk when I was 18 -- and dare I say most guys and a lot of women, too? Yet because this kid has even the hint of celebrity (he was one of 75 hopefuls on the U.S. Ski development team), it leads the national news and blows up into an international story.

Meanwhile 18-year-old boys we all sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight our wars (wars that, arguably, we will never win) lay down their lives in silence. Those guys are macho in my book, for sure. We just choose not to focus on them.

♦◊♦

"A real man doesn't lie or cheat or beat his chest, but stares down things that seem impossible -- like flying at the speed of sound or walking on the moon -- and doing them anyways," I recently wrote in a piece about astronauts, but I might as well have been referring to all men.

"The New Macho" is a guy who has an aggressive moral compass that prioritizes the things that he finds important: family, being honest, making a difference in the world. He goes all out to figure that out, yet he is also more apt to take risks "and stare down things that seem impossible."

Read the rest of "The New Macho" here.

A White Man in a Black Country

2011-08-07T21:25:30-04:00

I traveled to Kenya and learned some things about himself and our conceptions of race.

I traveled to Kenya with my wife Elena and six year-old son Cole. A minority for the first time in my life, it made me think differently about race and my own racism.

As Kenya is a former English colony, which became independent in 1964, I am sure there are white Kenyans, but I literally never saw one during my entire visit. At the Nairobi airport on the way home, I did notice a number of inter-racial couples with beautiful babies with light brown skin everywhere. I stopped counting when I got into the double digits.

Everywhere I went, very-dark-skinned men and women kept welcoming me home, like I was a Jew returning to Israel. I am neither black nor Jewish, so at first, the kindness confused me. I kept trying to imagine walking north on the East Side of Manhattan, past 110^th Street, and the residents of Harlem taking a look at my blond hair and blue eyes, welcoming me home.

♦◊♦

"Jambo!"

Everyone we met cheerfully greeted us with the Swahili "hello." Our drivers, waiters, and our guide Protus took a particular shining to Cole. They'd bear-hug him whenever they saw him.

This made me think of a recent column by Shawn Taylor, a black man with a light-skinned daughter, about how, at the playground, he's treated like a leper instead of the proud father he is. In one recent incident, Taylor was playing with his daughter and another little blonde girl. The blonde girl fell to the ground by accident, and her mother assumed the worst about Taylor. She calling him a n*gger in front of his daughter. Taylor's kept his cool, but he had to comfort his daughter, who was in tears.

Recently, a man drove a white van into our community back home. He tried to convince a young boy to get in the van, but the boy ran away, screaming. It left the community in a state of paranoia. All of the parents gave their kids the don't-talk-to-strangers talks.

So after Protus, a large black man, took our son in his arms the moment he met him, Cole asked, "I thought I wasn't suppose to talk to strangers. Is he okay?"

"Yes," I said, "he is a very sweet man who is just being nice." But inside I wondered what I would say if a black man on the playground back home did the same thing.

♦◊♦

Read more of Tom Matlack here.

Photo by the Author

Why Are Good Men Still Dying in Afghanistan?

2011-08-07T16:35:28-04:00

I had just finished the harrowing account of just how we got bin Laden in the New Yorker -- including a Navy Seal who tackled two people he had reason to believe had suicide bomb vests on to save the rest of his team -- when I got the first report of our largest single day death toll in the wars that have dragged for near a decade now.

I personally went from cheering the amazing courage of the guys dropping into a Pakistan compound, despite having to crash land their helicopter to find Bin Laden -- to realizing the utter futility of what we are doing there when men from the very same unit got shot out of the sky yesterday on yet another mission to try to weed out the bad guys.

Perhaps we are engaged in a war on terror that will determine the very future existence of the United States as we know it. Perhaps the attempt, despite looking futile at times, to install democratic institutions in Iraq and the largely illiterate and desperately poor Afghanistan is the only way to preserve American freedom.

But if that is the case, why are our very bravest men still getting shot out of the sky? And why is our country's debt being downgraded at least in part because of the financial cost of embarking on the wars on terror in the Middle East?

Read the rest of the story

Photo by permission of Michael Kamber

Addicts are Superhuman

2011-08-07T09:13:00-04:00
Is addiction a "special gift" that, if harnessed, can be used for good rather than evil?

A while ago, I wrote about Amy Winehouse's tragic death and wondered out loud about what role her art and addiction played in her demise, along with a long list of other great artists who died at the age of 27.

I picked up the paper this morning to read John Hopkins professor of Neuroscience David J. Linden's research on why addicts tend to be among the most successful individuals if they manage not to kill themselves. (To be honest, I am embarrassed to say my mom sent me a link to an NPR interview with Linden weeks ago, but I was too lazy to read it.)

Linden's research points to addiction being genetically correlated to blunted dopamine receptors. "Addicts want their pleasures more but like them less," according to Linden. That's because they have a problem in the pathway -- the dopamine receptors that make normal people feel happy and complete -- that should allow them to feel pleasure. That's why addicts are a restless bunch, constantly in search of some artificial way to fill that gap.

Linden's explicit conclusion based on his research is that the correlation between greatness, in pretty much all fields, from art to business to politics, and addiction is not despite the addiction but in fact because of it. Greatness doesn't cause addiction, but addictive qualities cause greatness. (Wow, why didn't I think of that! I'd like to go find this guy Linden and give him a Good Men Project bear hug.)

The very traits that make an addict crave pleasure make him or her more creative and take risks. "The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace," says Linden.

There's a reason my mom sent me the NPR piece on Linden, and it all started ringing a bell for me. I'm no Kurt Cobain, but my dopamine receptors are pretty damn blunted. Food, booze, coffee, the Internet ... I have had my struggles with addiction. When I got old enough to consider work an even semi-important objective, I also became an insane risk-taker in my professional life -- before, during, and after getting sober.

I've had success far in excess of my talent (became CFO of huge company at 29, sold it, then at 31 saved a web company from certain death that went on to become $5 billion market cap, among other notable "wins"). Harder working and, frankly, smarter peers didn't get as far. I always described that difference as their playing by the rules and my refusal to do so. But it seems there's more to it than that.

In the end, as Linden points out, it came down to risk tolerance. As an addict I sought out risk whether or not it led to success or absolute gut-wrenching failure -- and to be honest, there were more failures than successes. Over time I realized that no matter how many times you fail, the world measures you by your greatest successes, not your many failures. In fact, if you blow up and come back, it's called heroic. So my strategy was just to keep rolling the dice until I hit the jackpot. Normal people wouldn't do that.

The killer -- literally, when it came to Amy Winehouse, who had enough fame and fortune to last any non-addict a lifetime -- is the inability of the jackpot, once you finally hit it, to make any real dent in those dopamine receptors. The "high" from even the most stunning triumph lasts about a minute and a half. Then the restlessness sets back in.

There's one more element that makes us addicts superhuman, when we don't kill ourselves. The obsessive character trait is often combined with an ADHD-like (or in fact, diagnosed ADHD) hyper focus followed by non-focus or, in fact, an inability to change focus or keep everyday things in perspective. A family member who is both an addict and has been formally diagnosed with ADHD recently described this phenomenon as zoning out punctuated by "bursts of focus."

I had never heard it described that way, but it is me and my life in a nutshell. I aspire to be a slug. I really don't like doing much of anything if I can get away with it. My friends often ask me what the hell I am doing with my time (I generally don't have a good answer) and get more than a little perplexed at my apparent success, financial and otherwise. What happens is that I get obsessed with something for no good reason other than an addictive attachment. And that mobilizes a burst of focus during which time I know that I do things most others couldn't and wouldn't want to.

The question, of course, that remains is how does an addict, even a sober one, possibly cope with never feeling enough pleasure to slow down or fight off the need to do the deal or write the novel that fills the void for an instant. All the premature deaths of amazing talent suggest that the upside of addiction may be superpowers and success, but the downside is still devastating. For me, it has been particularly challenging to have a somewhat normal amount of patience, with myself or others, and to learn how to socialize with any semblance of grace.

Perhaps the answer for us addicts is to see addiction not so much as a pathology -- a disease -- but a special gift. As Linden concludes, "So, when searching for your organization's next leader, look for someone with attenuated dopamine function: someone who is never satisfied with the status quo, someone who wants the feeling of success more than others--but likes it less."

And, of course, try not to kill yourself, but instead try to enjoy life for longer than a nanosecond, even if your brain isn't wired for it.

Does Buying Sex Make You a Criminal?

2011-07-25T10:41:50-04:00

In a study of 202 men conducted in the Boston area by clinical psychologist Melissa Farley and the non-profit group Prostitution Research and Education, men who pay for sex were found to be more likely to commit a number of crimes, including violent acts against women. The study was conducted via face-to-face interviews after recruiting subjects through the local paper. Subjects were first asked to reveal whether they buy sex. Then they were paired off based on background to test whether or not their attitudes would lead to crime in the future (current criminals buying more sex would be expected and was not the point of the study).

According to Reuters:

Men who paid for sex were more likely to report having committed felonies and misdemeanors, including crimes related to violence against women and those related to substance abuse, assault and weapons.

The buyers and non-buyers agreed that the most effective deterrent to buying sex would be to be placed on a list of men described as sex offenders. Jail time was also considered an effective deterrent.

This is certainly an important question and one that bears directly on the impact of the accelerating sex trade. But 202 subjects recruited in the local paper by an activist with an ax to grind (Farley is an anti-prostitution activist) doesn't seem to be good science. The stated goal of the study was to test whether sex purchasers would commit more crimes in the future by looking at their attitudes, and yet the most damning evidence was backward looking (felons buy more sex), which doesn't prove much.

Perhaps the most challenging part of the study is the dependence on self-reporting. As reported in Newsweek yesterday, about a similar survey, men do not generally tell the truth about purchasing sex. So, finding subjects in the Boston study, via the newspaper, who claim not to buy sex would likely turn up subjects particularly sensitive to women's plight, or at least claiming to be.

I applaud both the Newsweek study and the Boston study for appropriately shining a light on the issue of the growing prevalence of the sex trade and its potential negative consequences for both men and women. But we need much more comprehensive research to come to any real conclusions.

And, or course, it would help if we all started getting honest about what is going on.

---Photo Flickr/kyz

Stillness

2011-07-11T11:13:26-04:00
What happens when we stop everything?

A couple of hours after I got to Paradise Valley, Montana I handed my laptop and iPhone over to Stacy, the ranch guest manager. I had already snuck upstairs in the lodge to login on the ranch's improved satellite Internet to put together a blog post.

I realize going to a ranch is an extravagance. I was fortunate to have such an opportunity. So in a snap instant I decided that I couldn't trust myself to unplug. I needed to take action.

When traveling, I have a hard time really seeing what I am looking at right away. On this trip we went to Yellowstone the first day in Montana. We saw brown bears, coyotes, bison with their young, elk, and antelope.

But it wasn't until the drive from Bozeman to Paradise Valley on Father's Day that I saw the vastness of the Montana countryside and the snow-capped mountains, too beautiful to be real.

The first night after turning in my electronic contraband I still felt jumpy. I had trouble getting to sleep and when I got up in the middle of the night to take a leak I was disturbed not to be able to check my twitter feed.

Monday I met up with Mags, a painted mare with whom I had bonded during previous visits. She guided me through rushing streams and up wildflower-filled fields to commanding views of the Yellowstone River and Mount Emigrant.

I laughed with friends along the trail and secretly wondered what might be happening in the blogosphere -- a story about an original Playboy bunny and the controversy over women looking for ugly husbands. But by the time I got back to my cabin and made a fire for my wife and kids a strange thing had begun to take root in me.

♦◊♦

Stillness is a foreign concept in the modern world, and particularly for a stimuli addict like me. Yet I know from a fair bit of meditation in years past that silence, and not moving, can lead not only to a sense of well-being but also to a deeper connection to the world.

In my everyday life, the closest thing I get to stillness is the odd craving for sleep. I can nap just about anywhere. But when I do, I generally wake up disoriented and on edge. It's as if the assault of the modern world grinds me down to a point of exhaustion. Even my catnaps don't get to the underlying issue. I wake up startled, with my defenses up.

Stillness is something completely different from sleep. It's not a drug or an antidote to hyper-activity. For me, it's the not-doing while fully awake that leads to relaxation and a different level of awareness of my environment.

When I move quickly I'm constantly reacting to the world on a superficial level, bouncing around like pinball. The thing about stillness is that I finally have the time to breathe deeply, look fully, and see below the surface of things.

The transition from movement to stillness is not without discomfort, at least for me. My body and mind keep looking for an easy out, imagining important emails I must be missing or things I forgot to do. Or that's just my brain playing tricks on me. There's nothing I have to do.

Except be still.

♦◊♦

My computer and iPhone were waiting for me. I made it from Sunday to Thursday on the electronic dark side of the moon before a modest emergency at home required me to send out an email. It was a quick downhill slide from there.

But I had those five full days of stillness, and even more long rides without interruption before leaving on Sunday. Mags would lope along, my body moving in rhythm to hers, giving me a sense of floating in this beautiful moment completely without a care in the world.

I'm on the plane now, heading home to the grind of civilization, but when I get there I'm going to hold onto the feeling of riding through a rushing stream, Mags' warm body below me as the freezing-cold spray hits my leg and, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of mountains too beautiful to be real.

I know what I saw on my trip was real, the collected bits of beauty I miss by being so busy.

All images by author.

The Curious Case of the Promiscuous Politcian

2011-07-05T15:35:41-04:00

Are we to blame for all the horndog male politicians?

For months now, I've been carrying the mantle for the good men falsely accused of being bad. I still believe that we focus far too much energy on celebrity misdeeds and not enough on the more pressing and nuanced issues of modern manhood. But the events of the last few weeks have forced me to rethink one type of man often caught by scandal: the politician.

Let's start with rape and then move onto being a pathological dirtbag.

Over the holiday weekend, I published a little blog post about a rape being a rape even if the victim is a prostitute or a maid of questionable credibility. I thought 10 people would read it. I was wrong. Apparently defining rape as forced sexual contact, no matter the victim's background, is a controversial thing to say.

The most poignant comment was:

I am sorry to say this Tom, but you are absolutely right. I was raped at age 16, and I reported. The cop that interviewed me asked me questions referring to the man that raped me as a "gentlemen", and because I was 16 at the time it was assumed that I had "been around the block; so to speak" by the cop. Because of that experience, if I where ever raped again, I would never report. I understand innocent until proved guilty, I think it's a great thing about our justice system, but I also believe that the victim of a crime should be given some respect and shown some compassion.

Since rape is a legal matter, and I am neither judge nor jury, let's just leave it that sexual crimes are a men's issue (both in our role as victim and criminal) and move onto the correlation between politics and generally terrible human beings.

I happened to watch The Kennedys mini-series recently, starring Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear and originally kept off of the air by the family's objections. In a pivotal scene, JFK confides to his brother about his sexual appetites, "I can't stop acting like a little boy."

DSK is not alone in his use of political power for sexual advantage. It's hardly worth recounting such a long list of men. Hell, it might be easier to list all of the male leaders who don't associate power with sexual privilege. Our current president appears to be one, whether or not you like his politics.

DSK may or may not be a rapist, but certainly, as we examine his record even apart from the maid in question, he sure appears to be the next dirtbag in a long line of sexual-predator politicians. While I continue to believe the primary issue facing most men is the struggle with how to be good fathers and husbands---and not what celebrity bad boy is today's headline---I do think we have a responsibility to call a spade a spade when it comes to our leaders.

But here's the part that honestly confuses me. Bill Clinton and JFK were enormously popular and, one could argue, were elected by women despite their well-known mistreatment of women in their personal lives. I don't get that.

One argument goes that men like George W. Bush did far more damage to women in their policies (not to mention blowing up a few Middle Eastern countries) than Bubba did to Monica and his other teenaged mistresses.

But I don't buy that argument at this point. We're all equally complicit in the sexual-predator-as-male-politician-trap. Sure, we'd like a politician who actually represents our political views, but can't we say that we'd also like our leaders to be men (and women but, frankly, I can't think of one female politician for whom it's an issue) who act with integrity around their sexual appetites? That doesn't mean they have to be perfect. They don't need to be married and only sleep with their wives for the purpose of procreation. They just can't use their power to sleep with every woman, or boy, who crosses their path. And they can't just harass, force, or badger anyone for their own physical gratification.

The federal law prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace is Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as amended. The law makes employers responsible for preventing and stopping sexual harassment that occurs on the job. Harassment is defined as "unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment."

Ladies and gentlemen, can we agree to start there?

Without the distraction of some politician running around with his manhood hanging out of his pants, we can get back to what it means to be a man the rest of us.

Why Gaga & Chelsea Are Good for Men

2011-07-05T10:34:58-04:00
Sometimes pop culture actually gets it right. By that I mean cultural icons can tap into something so foreign, so crazy, so insane that it actually wakes us up to a deeper truth about ourselves through our cult worship of the stars themselves. We don't quite know what is happening until it's too late.

Let me digress. One of the most influential books I ever read as a teenager was Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I know: a real barnburner. But what I found fascinating about the book was how Kuhn explains the way knowledge, even in science, is not absolute. Truth is a moving target and subject to groupthink, or as Kuhn calls it, a paradigm shift. We all believe the earth is flat -- and that is our truth -- until one day somebody sails across the Atlantic. That piece of data is a fly in the ointment of the existing belief structure. Once there are enough data points contradicting the existing paradigm, the entire edifice of what is truth has to change to a new paradigm, whether a round earth or an earth that orbits the sun or the theory of relativity.

Of course what is true of science is true of everything else too. That's why I have always been suspect of those who lay claim to first-hand knowledge of eternal truth. I really believe that supposed facts are all relative and we are always one anomaly in the data away from having to rethink everything.

Which brings me to my two new favorite paradigm-shifters, Lady Gaga and Chelsea Handler. Ask even their fans why they love them and they come up with a wide range of bizarre answers. The following, I would argue, is based on our collective intuition that these women have got something right that we all know, but have been missing for way to long...

Any discussion of what it means to be a man involves what it means to be a woman. We define ourselves in large part via this inextricable dance of being male and female. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, perhaps, are the most impacted by the rigid historic definitions of gender.

As we have tried to foster a nationwide discussion about what it means to be a good father, son, husband, worker and man we have come back again and again to, how we relate to women through sex and relationships, and the various ways men treat women well and not so well. It has become very clear that defining manhood in isolation is a futile exercise without the context of considering changing conceptions of what it means to be a woman.

So to talk about manhood it seems we have to be willing to talk about womanhood. And just like men are at a point of profound transition, so too are women. We have these relatively traditional vestiges of what it means to be feminine propagated by mainstream media, porn, and even politics. But under the surface there is a revolution going on against the very basis of those beliefs.

I saw Lady Gaga at Radio Music Hall when she was just on the cusp of breaking out (you can read about that here, "Poker Face: Don't Ask, Don't Tell"). One of the things I loved most about her is that she is not traditionally beautiful. She is frankly weird-looking even before all the performance art and make-up. What I also loved about her then and still do now is that at the core of all the insanity is an amazing voice. Check out this a capella version of her song "Born This Way" and tell me the woman doesn't put Madonna to shame:

I also recently watched the 60 minutes segment in which Gaga explains her "little monsters." Her message is really all of us, especially girls and women, who don't fit into the traditional stereotypes of what it is to be female. She calls herself, and us by proxy, the "freaks." In other words the anomaly in the scientific theory about truth that has worn down at the edges so much that it is no longer working because, well, most of us no longer feel like we fit in. Her message is one of encouraging her audience to embrace their freak nature, to accept who they are with radical honesty, and thereby find the superstar hidden within.

Yes she is a brilliant choreographer of her own fame through insane fashion, half-naked performance, and self-promotion taken to the extreme. But all the swirl of activity, I would argue, is needed to break down the barrier of the edifice of truth about women that is no longer useful to them or us as men. You don't have to be stereotypically beautiful, you don't have to feel like a freak, you don't have to accept homophobia, you don't have to shun your sexuality. Be who you were born to be is the Gaga mantra.

Back when I was single I used to watch this ridiculous show called, The Best Damn Sports Show Period. It featured comedian Tom Arnold, former Philadelphia Phillies 1st baseman Jon Kruk, and former Detroit Piston John Salley with guests like Snoop Dogg, Dennis Rodman, Bob Knight, and Chris Rock over 1,000 episodes over almost a decade on the air. I loved the fact that I could watch the show and just relax into my sofa and laugh my ass off at guys talking sports completely like me and my buddies do. Objectively the show was actually pretty awful but it connected to a real piece of me that helped me relax and see humor in the stupidest possible banter about a topic for which I did then and still have great passion: sports.

With BDSSP off the air and me heading into my 10^th year of marriage, my nightly routine with my wife has taken on a new mainstay: Chelsea Lately. There's a round table discussion of the day's news, not unlike BDSSP, with a panel of comedians like high-pitched and infinitely funny gay man Ross Mathews and my personal favorite Loni Love, who Chelsea often calls her "Chocolate Thunder." Then of course there is Chuy, the Mexican "nugget" who is Chelsea's one constant on the show. For the uninitiated here's a clip where Loni and other members of the roundtable show up topless, causing Chelsea to lose it (and not because Chuy is wearing a headdress):

Where the hell is Tom going with this one, a reader might justifiably ask? We went from the philosophy of science to Mexican nugget in one giant leap of logic.

Fair enough. I love Chelsea for the same reason I love Lady Gaga: she fearlessly breaks down the barriers of what it means to be female and, frankly a human being, in 2011. Homosexuality, race, sex, little people for crying out loud, she just doesn't care what you think. She is brutally honest and, as a result, incredibly funny. At least to me.

What I value most about Chelsea though is her approach to female sexuality, which is the constant refrain on her show. She just refuses to live within the boundaries of what women are supposed to be like. She jokes openly about her sex life, and just about anyone else in the news or on her panel. And in so doing she becomes another powerful anomaly in the received truth about women.

I do wish she would slow down with the booze and drugs. But anyone with a little person sidekick is really okay with me, especially a Mexican one.

Objectification in the context of human interaction, it seems to me, is the reduction of a living, breathing, and three-dimensional person to an object. If Albert Einstein showed up in a centerfold naked we'd all agree that was truly wrong, even if for some strange reason men with mustaches became a huge sexual fad. Wrong not just because we don't really like to see old guys in the buff, but because it would reduce a genius to a two-dimensional object.

One of the central issues in gender relations in both directions is the objectification -- the reduction and over-simplification -- of the opposite sex.

Men are currently being painted with broad brush of bad boy celebrities and the supposed slackers in their 20s. It is The End of Men at the very moment where more men are staying home with the kids and thinking hard how to love in a way that works for women.

Women continue to be portrayed as sexual objects, where superficial beauty matters infinitely more than soul. The explosive growth of the pornography industry demonstrates the desire on the part of men to see women who turn them on not in the flesh and in relationship but as some kind of skin-deep fantasy.

The "bad boy" media frenzy is all about objectifying men, making them all the same just like we airbrush every freckle, every wrinkle, every bulge on a Playboy centerfold's body. We want our women stars to be all the same under their clothes -- drop-dead gorgeous. And we want our men to be all the same under their clothing too -- not so powerful, not so suave, but flawed, those flaws exposed.

So the question becomes how do we as men deal with women in a more meaningful and ultimately fulfilling way. And how do women break out of the preconceived notions of being female.

Twenty-four year-old Lady Gaga and comedian Chelsea Handler are part of a move towards a new paradigm of womanhood. And that's why I just can't seem to get enough of either one of them.

Call me crazy, a freak, a lover of women dressed in raw meat. Guilty as charged. But I do think there is more here than a singer running around in outrageous outfits and a comic talking incessantly about her Kaslopis.

Images courtesy of E!

What the Heck is a "Good" Man Anyhow?

2011-06-29T17:45:00-04:00
The fact that goodness is elusory makes it all the more important to talk about.

There have been many times I wished we had left the "good" out of our title. "The Man Project" would have worked just fine. Or even "dudes," or "why," to play off our genetic code.

But from the start "good" has been our cross to bear. With so many men in the public eye called out for bad behavior, men and women both seem to have a thirst for a different paradigm of manhood -- something fresh and real and, yes, good. Thus, our project was born.

The problem, of course, is that talking about "goodness" is like asking an eskimo to describe snow -- it's nearly impossible to pin down. "Goodness" is harder to define than "badness," which may be one reason why as a culture we have been spending so much time talking about men being bad rather than good. Things get even muddier when you start talking about "good" husbands and "good" fathers. The slope towards righteousness is slippery indeed. People might assume that I am writing about goodness and therefore, believe myself to be better than you.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have no claim to the high moral ground. Still, the expectation of many readers is that if you are going to found a project around goodness, you better at least have a working definition to follow.

That's the fundamental rub: how to talk about goodness without coming off like God and without judging others. Especially when my own life has been filled with mistakes along the way.

Goodness is an aspiration. It's something you can see in others and follow. But it comes in as many different shapes and sizes as there are people. You can't name it once and for all. That doesn't make it any less important. The very elusiveness of goodness, I would argue, makes it all the more important to think about and sort out on your own terms.

I have often said that my own definition of being a good man is loving my wife passionately, showing up for my kids and doing something to help somebody else. But that still leaves out a lot. To me, another part of being good is the discovery of seemingly completely random gifts. For example, I can get pretty much any kid under the age of two to fall asleep in my arms. I dove into a lake at summer camp when I was 10 and beat a field of well-trained swimmers by more than a body length over 100 yards. In business school our statistics professor would fill board after board with mathematical equations. Everyone else looked confused. For a reason I can't explain the symbols made perfect sense to me.

None of these are things I had to learn. In fact, I had to unlearn what I had been taught in order to allow the innate gift I was born with to flourish. In grade school I was told that I was slow at math. I felt loving babies was unmanly. Swimming wasn't as macho a sport as football. In a way, goodness required shutting down the thinking, self-critical, part of my brain to break through the limitations imposed from the outside. "Goodness" in the sense of being really good at something required a discovery process that had nothing to do with moral judgment and everything to do with the thing itself. It had to do with a letting go of some preconceived notion of who I could be and allowing a truer version of myself, a fundamentally better one, to emerge.

Along with goodness as a gift has come a sense of "good" as exuberance. I am reminded of a whole company founded around the phrase, "life is good."

Good in this context involves the actual feeling of a baby nuzzling into my neck, or the sensation of propelling my 6'3" frame with huge hands and feet through the water likes submarine. It the everyday experience of eating something delicious.

"Damn, that is GOOD!" we all say.

It's this last sense of the word good that I'd encourage you to consider as it relates to whatever being a good man means to you. It has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with living life to its fullest, enjoying the hell out of whatever brings you meaning as a man.

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Is It Safe to Come Out of the Cave?

2011-06-27T10:13:19-04:00

After years of hating people, Tom Matlack is ready to start connecting.

I often find myself in rooms full of a veritable sea of people these days. My wife is a very active philanthropist who works on issues for places such as the Perkins School for the Blind and Massachusetts General Hospital for Children. What this means for me is small talk, not my native tongue. We also have a constantly growing group of adult friends with whom we go to concerts, dinner, and even trips. These more intimate gatherings require small talk on steroids.

As a way to deflect my own social anxiety I developed a party trick. I announce to a table of perfectly kind human beings, "I really don't like people." It always gets a laugh, in part because I like to whip it out at a moment of laughter when we all are having a lot more fun than the statement seemed to indicate. I also think it touched the universal nerve that socializing, particularly for guys, can be taxing to our lizard brains. We'd be just as happy to crawl back into our caves with a remote and a beer.

But then it occurred to me, with a little help from my lovely spouse, that my joke was neither funny nor true. I love people. In fact, I crave human connection. They just scare the shit out of me. And always have.

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On personality tests I always come up an introvert---and a nasty one at that. My horoscope sign is Sagittarius, the archer who is half-man and half-horse. Us Sags are known to be tactless and restless despite our freedom-loving good humor.

On the Myers-Briggs, which looks at four key attributes, I am an Introverted-Intuitive-Thinking-Judging, or an INTJ, type. I think that means I have refined the art of retreating to my study to read a book and take a nap into an exquisite art form.

In terms of the enneagram, which breaks people down into nine types, I am a four, otherwise known as the individualist or the tragic romantic. Other fours, according to the enneagram website, are Prince, Thomas Merton, and J.D. Salinger---all men of great artistic ability (unlike me) who looked for deeper meaning in a solitary manner, sometimes fanatically so.

I've never been much of a joiner. I went to public high school in Western Massachusetts and like to say that I only heard about my prom in the weight room after it was over. That is stretching the truth, but the reality is that going to my prom, or on a real date, was well outside my social ability. I went to a few high school parties, but it was the rough equivalent of passing gallstones. Some people are born blind, I figured, I was just born hating people, or at least feeling profoundly uncomfortable in their presence.

In high school and college, I used swimming, marathon running, and rowing---the sports that required minimal skill and maximum pain---to cope. If I couldn't talk to you at a party, I was going to beat your head in on the roads or on the river. Take that, you MF'er, was my thought.

I also learned to drink to excess. The beauty of being drunk is that hatred, or fear, of people disappears as the anesthesia takes hold. You can do whatever you want in any situation because, mentally, you're no longer there. You're somewhere in the heavens, watching this drunken fool talk to girls, dance like a crazy person, and break stuff just for fun.

After college, I took my athletic mindset---no skill other than inflicting maximum pain on the opposite team---to the business world, and it paid off financially. My only problem was I was still the same miserable SOB.

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Just to give you some perspective, I recently went back to my 25^th college reunion. I realized I have been fighting these demons now for decades. I have three kids (17, 15, and six) and have, on paper, a damn good life. But the "I hate people" mantra is something I was using as a party joke as recently as this March on vacation with our dearest friends.

My joke is only funny because it is so clearly at odds with the learned behavior I've gutted out over these last years: teaching myself to make small talk, to find that one person in a crowd who has an amazing story to share, and to laugh until it hurts with guests at even the most mundane event. Over time, I've come to see that while I might complain about coming out of the darkness of my cave, the sunlight of human interaction is actually no less essential to my being than water or food.

I am dying for a deeper level of human contact. It's not like I didn't want friends in high school. I just had absolutely no idea how to make them or to begin to fit in. These days I don't drink and haven't for almost 15 years. I'm often around people getting intoxicated and a bit silly. I can use that as an excuse to check out too, wandering off into unfair judgment of friends who hold their liquor a lot better than I ever did. But that's really no better than the hypocrisy of my running joke.

No, the person I have always hated is myself. And instead of being honest about that I just pointed my finger at you: the kids going to the prom without me, the college kids who joined the fraternity, the "in" crowd at the bar, even the sea of humanity I meet on a regular basis, working to cure cancer, among other things. And my fear has been that you would find out the truth about me.

But I think it's time for me to put that vice down with the rest of them and join the human race. Self-hatred is every bit as much a waste of time as hatred of others. I'm not perfect, but I have arms and legs and can, when I want to be, be charming according to my wife. The point, however, is that when I actually take the time to get to know these people, I find out that we're not different at all. Even the most stoic guy I know has shared stories with me that brought tears to my eyes and made me feel less alone.

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Cave Photo by Jared

The Paradox of Success

2011-06-20T19:52:00-04:00

I spoke to Pine Street Inn's job training graduates about falling down and getting back up.

Pine Street Inn began serving the homeless in 1969, providing a safe place for 200 men struggling with alcoholism. Today, it's the larget homeless shelter in New England, providing services to 1,300 homeless men and women in Boston each day. Over the course of a year, the Inn serves more than 10,000 homeless people. Pine Street provides permanent housing for about 600 tenants. They also have 700 other beds for emergency and transitional housing. In addition to housing, about 125 men and women participate in the Inn's annual job training programs, which are deisgned to teach various skills to help participants acquire and maintain steady work.

Today, I was the commencement speaker as this year's participants graduated from the job training programs. Here's what I had to say:

* * * * *

President Downie, Board of Directors, Pine Street staff, graduates of the Pine Street Inn job training, graduates with permanent housing, family members, honored Guests:

Today I want to talk to you about success.

We know a lot about failure.

I know a lot about it.

I suspect you do, too.

In fact, failure is pretty much all we hear about in the news these days: murder, financial misdeeds, even a Congressman putting his manhood on Twitter and then lying about it.

But success is actually a much harder thing to define than failure.

I want to ask each of you to think for a moment about how you define success in your life.

To be honest, I have always had a very hard time defining success for myself. I have often been confused about it.

So in recent years I have tried to find people that I felt had succeeded in some profound way and borrowed their definition for a while. They are what I like to call my heroes.

When I was thinking about talking to you about this topic, a line kept coming back to me from the "Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous." It's from a passage that is often called "The Promises," where it talks about the rewards of staying sober as an alcoholic. The line I have always loved and defines a kind of success in life to me is:

"You will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle you."

It seems to me that part of success has to do with overcoming adversity, with coming to an understanding of who you really are, with growing up and experiencing something I call grace -- that miracle when you have literally no idea how something happened, but it did, and you know for sure that it is good.

Our culture too often defines success in a way that just doesn't work.

It's inauthentic at best and leads to disaster at worst.

We live in a culture that tells us it's what you have, not who you are, that counts.

There are many, many examples of people who have succeeded on paper to a huge degree --Tiger, Arnold, Charlie Sheen -- but utterly failed in their lives.

That is the paradox of life: you usually have to fail utterly and completely in order to succeed.

Success, it turns out, is an inside job. You can pretend it's not, but in the end you will fall flat on your face.

I know. There was a day not too long ago that I appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal for having taken my company public and then selling it 90 days later for $2 billion. That very same week I found myself in my car in a church parking lot with nothing but the clothes on my back, alone with the crushing knowledge that I hadn't succeeded at all. Despite what was written in the newspaper headlines, I had failed miserably as a father and a husband. You see, I was a drunk.

I called my mom and then my grandmother.

My grandmother's words at my most desperate hour: "It's not how you fall in life, it's how you pick yourself up." And for the last 15 years, I have tried to do that.

I had a 6-month-old son, Seamus, and 2-year-old daughter, Kerry, at that time. I would never live with them full-time, but I dedicated to being the best father I possibly could be. I got and stayed sober. I showed up for my life.

After doing my best with my kids on my own for five years, I met the woman of my dreams.

On my sixth sober anniversary, Dec. 28, 2002, I married Elena. Then on Valentine's Day 2005 we had my third child, Cole. Kerry is now 17, Seamus is 15, and Cole is 6. Elena and I have been married eight years. I am sober going on 15. I would hate to call myself a success, but suffice it to say that I have much to be grateful for.

But I can still feel that utter despair sitting in that church parking lot like it was yesterday. And I hope I never forget where I came from.

You graduates know that as well as anyone, that to succeed in this world, you have to go through the shadow of death, that moment of truth when you look in the mirror and have no idea who is looking back at you. That moment when you ask yourself:

"What happened to me?"

"Who am I?"

"Is my life still worth living?"

It might be the death of a child, the loss of a job, or the gradual corroding effect of addiction.

But as they say in the big book of AA, "The result was nil until I let go absolutely."

It's that letting go of the outside stuff and working from the inside out that is the key to an honest and successful and happy life.

In my travels I am constantly looking for heroes, men and women who have had the guts to walk through that shadow of death. You can see it in their eyes.

One of my heroes spent 15 years inside Sing Sing before turning his life around. Another risked his life to take pictures of the war in Iraq. Another is an NFL Hall-of-Famer who used karate to keep himself grounded. I learned important lessons from each of my heroes that I carry with me each and every day.

You all are heroes to me. That is why I am here. You inspire me to keep going on my journey even though not every day is easy. Some are still really hard.

Please remember how no matter how much stuff you might accumulate in the days ahead that success is an inside job and involves your soul, not your car or your house.

In my view you have already defined success in your own lives and for me and everyone else here who has had the privilege of witnessing this ceremony.

Congratulations and thank you. Thank you for sharing this day and your success with me.

Read more at The Good Men Project.

Should Women Really "Go Ugly"?

2011-06-20T13:00:38-04:00
This post originally appeared on The Good Men Project

Vicki Larson and I have been having a fairly heated conversation about what ugly has to do, or not do, with a man being marrying material. Her Huffington Post column got huge attention for claiming that women should choose ugly husbands, lest they be subject to the Weiner/Tiger/Arnold syndrome--appealing and powerful men who crash and burn.

I am not sure we will ever agree completely, but in my direct conversations with Vicki I get the sense that we actually agree, perhaps more than we disagree. Vicki and I thought it might be informative to engage in a spirited question and answer about her original piece and my sense of what manhood really is all about.

Tom: Vicki, everywhere I look, there are articles that attempt to summarize manhood (ironically most often written by women). Don't you think making sweeping stereotype-driven judgments about men is the same thing as making those judgments about women, or blacks or gays?

Vicki: You're surprised? Women love analyzing men! Sweeping stereotypes are horrible -- I hate being seen as a high-maintenance gold-digger living off my ex's hard-earned money just because I'm a divorced blonde. Intelligent people understand that the world doesn't work in absolutes -- "never" and "always."

What saddens me reading the comments here and elsewhere is that we still focus on how "bad" the other sex is. The studies I cite are old, they've been written about many times before, but because of social media, many people knee-jerk react and spread it faster, farther and wider than before. So much for thoughtful commentary.

Tom: I heard an interesting interview with Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper on "Mad Men," in which he talked about how difficult it is for him to be objectified. He was serious about it and appeared to be an honest and sweet man despite his good looks. Should we be feeling sorry for him?

Vicki: We all want to feel attractive, not objectified. Still, Hamm chose a career that feeds off of good looks and he's being paid well and has many opportunities because of it. But it's great he's talking about it because women don't know how men feel about being lust objects. Most women, however, do; even women who aren't "beautiful" are drooled over because they might have great breasts or a butt. We need to be empathetic to how the other sex experiences things; Louanne Brizendine's books on male and female brains are great.

Tom: Do you really believe the studies you cite that men with higher testosterone, presumably the most macho guys around, are not to be trusted?

Vicki: I didn't write that. Studies indicate men with higher testosterone levels have a tendency to lie and cheat more than men with lower levels. They're also incredibly exciting. That doesn't mean all of them will lie and cheat, and any woman who decides to marry a guy or not based on that alone is foolish. Of course, people get married for lots of foolish reasons.

Tom: In the course of my work with "The Good Men Project," I've spoken to thousands of men about what it means to be good--from inmates to celebrities--and one of the things I have come to is that goodness is a self-defined concept. For one man it might be taking care of his autistic child and for another it's risking his life to take pictures of the truth of the war in Iraq. How do you define "good" as it relates to manhood?

Vicki: Not to diss the name of your project, which as the mom of two young men and a woman who loves men I'm a fan of, but good is a meaningless word. Mildred Baena called Arnold Schwarzenegger a good man. Good to her, perhaps, but not to his family. And, you aren't good because you're taking care of your autistic child; that's what you signed up for when you became a parent.

Good isn't a male or female thing. So I'd rather define what it is to be human -- kind; loving; compassionate; empathetic; self-aware; honest; respects him/herself and others; generous of spirit; realizes he/she is part of a much bigger picture; takes responsibility for his/her actions, and has a moral compass. That's so incredibly sexy it's beyond "good." Bonus points if it comes with a great face and bod.

Tom: In picking a spouse, we grapple with different levels of attraction. There's the animalistic, "Wow that person is hot," kind. The, "I am just in awe of that person." And finally, "I can't imagine walking this planet without that person in my life," kind. When you advised women to go ugly what were you really saying about attraction?

Vicki: I was tongue-in-cheek about going ugly! I am not telling women -- or men -- to settle for anyone less than the person who rocks their world. But we need to reexamine what attractive means.

Anthony Weiner was once named a Cosmo eligible bachelor. Yet clearly from the comments here, few found him handsome and many called him ugly. I don't think he's ugly but he's not hot enough to send me nude pics of himself! So, what makes him an eligible bachelor if it's not his looks? Many commentors said he only attracted models and women because of his power and status. Well, if that's what we consider attractive, if that's what Cosmo's selling to women as good hubby material, no wonder men call us gold-diggers. Plus, since those guys are the high testosterone guys, we're right back to the beginning.

I'd hope he was an eligible bachelor because of the whole package; he's a smart (until he proved himself incredibly dumb), fit, passionate, funny man with a (once) promising future. If you're just going for the pretty and other things that don't really matter in a fulfilling relationship -- and I include power, status and money among those -- you're not looking at the right things. When considering someone "attractive," we should include character, too.

Tom: In a world filled with porn and superficial images of female beauty what do you tell your sons, 17 and 20, about what to look for in a woman?

Vicki: You think I can tell my sons anything? Girls are an off-limits topic. I have been delightfully pleased at the girls they consider attractive, real girls with real bodies, no makeup, sweet and smart.

I hope I've modeled for them what to look for by my priorities -- family and friends over material things and status -- and how I respect my body; I'd never inject poison or plastic into or overload it with crappy food.

Tom: Do you think that we are guilty of spending too much time on celebrity men behaving badly or it is important to nail these guys in order to make sure women see what is not acceptable?

Vicki: We spend too much time on celebrities, period, and increasingly it's becoming "news." We don't want to just nail the guys; we seem to enjoy any celebrity falling. There have been plenty of women who fall, but women tend to self-destruct. It seems more high-profile men often behave badly with women, and that, unfortunately, reflects poorly for men in general for some women. It's those stereotypes again. But I sure hope we aren't looking to celebrities for guidance. Who cares what they do? Politicians, however, must be held accountable.

Tom: Do you really think marriage works better when the wife is hotter than the husband?

Vicki: It's obvious it doesn't since mine ended in divorce! Okay, I'm joking. I think guys would love to have a hot wife. But there's no one formula that leads to a happy marriage. A marriage works best when the couple is committed to each other, similar in the ways that matter, and forgiving and accepting in the ways in which they differ. Having a hot husband or wife does not create that.

Tom: Do you think Weiner's wife Huma Abedin will, as you suggest, dump Weiner while there is still time so she can use her beauty to snag another man--only this time "go ugly"?

Vicki: I did not suggest Abedin dump Weiner, and I was, again, tongue-in-cheek about splitting before the baby will have memories of the divorce. It's an option. But she's about to be a mom, and deciding to divorce when you have kids is tough as it should be given how divorce impacts kids. Ask any 40-something woman what it's like to find love and you'll hear that it's harder than when she was in her 20s or 30s, even if she's beautiful, smart and accomplished.

Tom: We talk a lot about defining moments as men. It could be the loss of a child or a job, the slow erosion of addiction, or a divorce. But that moment when you look in the mirror and have no idea who is looking back. When for the first time you have to get radically honest with yourself about something excruciatingly hard. And that goodness often comes from devastating failure rather than success. Do you think it's possible Weiner will end up a better man?

Vicki: I'd love to believe that we could get that self-awareness, have that epiphany, without hitting bottom. But hitting bottom and being "radically honest" don't automatically give us that epiphany -- we need ways to think and act differently, and we need support. Will Weiner become a better man? I hope so, for his child's sake. And if he's lucky, Abedin will be right there by his side.

♦◊♦

Vicki Larson is the lifestyles editor at a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper and the author of the hugely popular blog post "Hot or Not? Why Women Shouldn't Pick Attractive Husbands"

Tom Matlack is the founder The Good Men Project and author of the rebuttal to Larson's piece, "Why Men Don't Need to Be Ugly to Be Good"

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Why Men Don't Need To Be Ugly To Be Good

2011-06-17T12:01:10-04:00
One of the most popular posts on Huffington Post this week, "Hot or Not? Why Women Shouldn't Pick Attractive Husbands,"claims that smart, beautiful, and financially independent women should resist the temptation to marry attractive and masculine men because they are, by definition, going to fail to be good husbands and fathers.

Attractive men don't make the best husbands, according to researchers. Guys who are rated as the most masculine -- a billboard for a man's good genes -- tend to have more testosterone, and men with higher testosterone levels are 43 percent more likely to get divorced than men with normal levels, 31 percent more likely to split because of marital problems and 38 percent more likely to cheat. In other words, they may be better cads than dads.

Writes author Vicki Larson before concluding:

So, now that Abedin evidently has Weiner's good genes, she can either stick it out another few years or split from Weiner now, before their unborn baby will have memories of the divorce, and while she's still young and attractive enough to snag another mate. This time, perhaps she should go ugly.

Evidently those men who are attractive, have testosterone, and are manly are inherently not to be trusted. And of course this is all written in the context of yet another celebrity caught with his pants down somehow representing all men, even those staying at home with the kids and those fighting for our country in the Middle East.

One of my favorite lines is from Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech. Facing violence and bigotry, he said on that sweltering day in our nation's capital: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The content of their character. It seems to me that goodness, as men and women, has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with the content of our character as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, as human beings. In looking for a spouse, how about looking for a human being who is a man or woman of character. Sure attraction is part of the laws of reproduction, but attraction is more than skin deep.

In my work with The Good Men Project I have spoken to literally thousands of men--from inmates in Sing Sing to a photographer taking pictures on the front lines of battle for the NYT--and their relative attractiveness never entered the equation when we talked about what it means to be good. In each case what all these men talked about was the desire to grapple with with the truth about themselves and the complex set of issues that face us as men. No it's not ugliness that makes us good, nor good looks that make us bad. It's something much more important.

Last week I was honored to give the commencement address at Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter that serves 1,200 people daily. My talk was about success and how they, like I, know a lot about failure. We read about it every day. But success is actually much harder to define. It involves stripping away the outside stuff and facing yourself square in the mirror even after you have lost every shred of who you thought you once were. The paradox of life is that we often have to fail utterly and completely before we can truly succeed. We are told over and over again that its what you have, and what you look like, that determines success it is actually who you are that counts.

Then on Sunday I was at my daughter's confirmation and witness a Catholic priest respond to intense pressure to shun the gays in his parish despite his desire to hold a mass in their honor during gay pride week. Father Unni happens to be a man of remarkable good looks (some of the ladies call him Father "what a waste") and also remarkable courage. What he did to take a stand on behalf of all his parishioners--black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight--took my breath away.

Julio Medina the former Sing Sing inmate, Michael Kamber the war photographer, the men graduating from Pine Street Inn, and Father Unni are just a few of what I like to call my "heroes." Men who inspire me to be and do better. To live a life of goodness, service, honesty and meaning. Do they happen to be good looking? Well yeah, in my view they are all pretty damn attractive. But not just because some of them could be models, but because they have each inspired me beyond words with the way they live their lives. These are the kinds of guys I would happily have my daughter marry, not because they are ugly but because they have character deep in their souls.

The continued piling on in our popular press that men, specially successful and handsome men, are guilty of evil just because of their gender and their looks is nothing less than the bigotry fought by MLK and others during the Civil Rights Movement, by brave women who fought for Equal Rights, and currently by homosexuals seeking the right to marry. Let's stop trying to put people in boxes and start having a frank conversation about what it means to be a good man, and a good woman.

And just because this question is so important I have agreed to continue this conversation with Vicki Larson in print on Monday -- here, at Huff, and also at The Good Men Project along with Vicki's blog, the OMG Chronicles. I look forward to hearing whether the mother of two presumably good-looking young men really meant what she said about women needing to go ugly to find men of any real worth. Stay tuned for that.