Hope you had a good Father’s Day yesterday. I did.

The indentured servants were given the day off, it being Sunday. We’re just not big on holidays, birthdays, or (ask Mrs. Squire) anniversaries here at the Stately Manor. Even Christmas is one more holiday to worry about, as Charlie Brown lamented.

In any event, Father’s Day ranks somewhere between Flag Day and Ice Cream Soda Day, which is tomorrow and, undoubtedly, the work of the Dairy Council and the soda pop cartel.

Even so, the scribes up in the attic at the Policy Werkes were struck by the anti-male tone of Sunday’s print news media.

The New York Times’ Sunday Styles section reports that “Many schools are declaring the traditonal concept of the father-daughter dance a relic.” That seems a damnable shame.

On Page 26 of the NY Times “news” section, “Evangelical leader in Brooklyn faced storm after his father came out as a woman.” The Times just loves sticking it to evangelicals. (“Clinging to their God, etc.”)

The cover story of the Times’ magazine doubles down on the anti-man theme. Pictured on the cover is the Army traitor formerly known as Bradley Manning, seated, wearing a gray suit but woman’s high-heeled shoes and (in a clever bit of irony) man-splaining those feet wide apart.

“Becoming Chelsea Manning” [Pay Wall?] is another salvo in the Times crusade in what it considers the latest injustice of an eternal civil rights struggle (new term alert): “gender dysphasia.”

It is, of course, an entirely sympathetic story, devoid of any chastisement, except to call her crime “astonishing.” No, the massive Afghan and Iraq doc dump “brought home, in exactly the way that Manning had hoped, the messiness of the two conflicts.”

That’s right. We Ugly Americans never would have known that Afghanistan and Iraq were a hot mess without a junior officer deciding on his/her own what was secret and what was not.

We get it. Point made. Brad … I mean, Chelsea Manning is a hero, not a traitor. Now, if Vladimir Putin had hacked documents …

Almost as bad was the Wisconsin State Journal’s cover article on its Opinion page. “Low testosterone makes better dads.” Sheesh.

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The pussification of the male species

Universities are fattening up on junk courses, Duke University explores the “toxic masculinity“ of (in particular) white men. “Rigid definitions of masculinity are toxic to men’s health,” Brown University declares.

Class, State, and Ideology, taught at UW-Madison by the Marxists at the sociology department’s Havens Center, serves up an “analysis of gender relations and male domination.” Let us guess how men fare in that Education Camp.

The election of Donald Trump, better minds than ours have suggested, was a reaction to the man-bashing in the popular culture and the academy, as well as to Hillary’s one raison d’ȇtre for her campaign: Vote for Me because I am Woman (Hear Me Snore).

Hillary Clinton spoke last month at a Planned Parenthood gala where drinks called “toxic masculinity” were served. National Review reports that the defeated candidate “explained that men are “doing everything they can to roll back the rights and progress we’ve fought so hard for over the last century.” Damnable creatures, those men!

The goal of the Left, therefore, becomes to train boys not to become men. Instead, boys should be feminized; they should never be encouraged to “be a man.” That’s too pressure-filled, too nasty, too mean. — National Review

It didn’t help that Sunday also brought news of the hung jury in Bill Cosby’s rape trial. The most effective TV role model paterfamilias since Robert Young. Philanthropist, breaker of race barriers, pudding commercial spokesman. He started out in the 1960s with comedy albums (remember those?) exploring the humor of childhood. In his twilight he preached responsibility and empowerment to black communities that had heard only blame and excuses-making.

Now this father figure is disgraced, hung jury or no.

Real men don’t need to apologize

So it is up to us men of the right to echo the message expressed by Ben Shapiro at National Review: “Emasculation is not a tool for social ills.” In point of fact, the young men shooting each other in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago need fathers who will father (verb, transitive).

The Left has been busy trying to shoot down “the myth” of the absent father in black communities. The USC Center for Health Journalism offers this antidote:

Our neighborhood, less than four miles from the U.S. Capitol, is one of the most neglected areas of the city. Here, 73 percent of children live in households headed by a woman. There is high poverty and unemployment, devastating crime and violence, substance abuse and homelessness, rising rates of high school dropouts and teenage pregnancy. Far too often, gunshots pierce the dark quiet nights, … mothers struggle to both make ends meet and keep their children safe. … too many black boys like the boys next door have to navigate life alone.

According to the latest Census figures, about 50 percent of African American boys under age 17 live with a mother only, compared with 16 percent of their white counterparts. Research shows that children in fatherless homes are more likely to drop out of school, exhibit behavioral problems, end up in the criminal justice system, suffer unemployment, and are at a greater risk of substance and drug abuse.

Spend some time with the wonderful National Center for Fathering.

I think of my own father, who bore on his face after a day in the fields the fertile loam of his farm, on his fingers grease from his machinery, on his boots the manure of his livestock. A man who survived the Great Depression, fought a war, contributed to the baby boom, and served his state in the legislature and his community in myriad volunteer organizations.

Fiercely independent, unafraid to speak his mind — he spared not senator nor governor. His mind was always working. And so were his sons. “No work/no eat,” was one of his mottos. “Always be thinking,” was another. “Goddammit to hell” was a third. Yeah, he could have been more compassionate; so could have his son.

Let’s close on someone who did not make the news Sunday. A man who stepped out of the camera frame, who passed up a tournament he could have one. Phil Mickelson attended his daughter’s high school graduation rather than the U.S. Open in Washington County.

These are real men.