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The Coneheads are back, thank God.  "Coneheads 2: Still Illegal" is deadpan brilliant, and I've yet to see it.  The first "Coneheads" was irresistibly funny and cold dark serious at the same time.  Its comic action was in immigrant language and logic, mostly Beldar speaking.  Others have pointed this out, conehead is next to raghead, or turban, to that ineradicable signifier of fundamental difference, Muslim, traditionalist.  

We love our conehead neighbors, Dan Ackroyd (Beldar), Jane Curtin (Prymaat), Michelle Burke (Connie Conehead).  The movie features a long narrative starring Ronnie Guestsetter, (Chris Farley), a repulsive car mechanic in greasy overalls who falls in love with the delicate pristine Conehead daughter, Connie Conehead.  She comes with her father to pick up the car Ronnie has just repaired.  Beldar challenges the repair bill as well he might since he is a demon repairer, Mr. Fixit from Outer Space, your lawn mower, your grandmother's dead watch.  Repair is instant.  Ronnie does not see Connie's cone, as such.  The Coneheads themselves, Connie included, are oblivious to Ronnie's corpulence.  Difference is perceived, not registered.

What is so doubly delightful, MAGA must choke on the genial hilarity, because it is so woke, a masterpiece of polytheistic thinking, thanks to the clearances provided by the Enlightenment, be truthfully self critical, profoundly sympathetic, and funny.  And again MAGA must groan, comedy does not exist on the right, can't be found anywhere, even after long and expensive talent searches.  Not one wit.  Name one.

I can't say Manhood flinches, Manhood confronts.  Manhood is so seriously discredited, she argues, it can only signify the contemptible.  Go ahead, she says, speak for Manhood, speak from Manhood, and, theoretically, be the butt of every standup comedian in America.  I can't care, I'm an octogenarian card carrying senior member of semi-communist Manhood, that great grand global fraternity, I adhere absolutely to the first oath, protect the vulnerable, and I give full consent to the second, cooperate with women.  

Of course stellar men fail Manhood all the time, most recently our celebrated good tough guy, Cesar Chavez, exposed, gone in a day, wiped out.  Perhaps Manhood should step back from reality, take a break.  It still has life in American literature, especially in tv sitcoms, I'm thinking "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Cosby Show,"  amazing realizations of the paternal sublime, Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver, Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable.  

Cosby had white writers, Ed Weinberger, Michael Leeson, John Markus, Gary Kott, but the show is Bill Cosby's performance.  Eight seasons, 1984-1992, Bill Cosby methodically attacked every racist idea lodged in our language.  The show's discourse, the sumtotal of its scripts, was and is the purest distillation of woke ideation.  Cliff Huxtable was the master of his situations, unquestionably manly, but also funny.  He wore suspenders and weird sweaters.  It took the edge off his authority.   If, as a father, you have trouble dealing with a rebellious daughter, I recommend several episodes of "The Cosby Show."  Cliff had three challenging daughters and they never got away with anything, Cliff, each episode, always finally in command.  

Contemporary American Manhood, which still does exist, whatever Monte Python says, owes Bill Cosby some exception, some standing, in its ongoing narrative.  Ward Cleaver was stuck in the 1950s, wore its ugly boring suit and tie for the length of the show, though he did on occasion perfectly solve Beaver's difficult juvenile problems.  The show's writers, Joe Connolly and Bob Mosher, realized the special tie between Ward and his two sons was based on respect.  Ward respected Beaver's question or quandary and Beaver listened soulfully to the paternal pearls Ward laid out in good strong sentences.  Young men in training for fatherhood should study these exchanges, father and son, in "Leave it to Beaver."  Hugh Beaumont and Jerry Mathis are forever in black and white film.  "The Cosby Show" is always in color, and you can take it from there.  

At some  point in my middle age, in Macy's men's department, shopping with a friend, I suddenly wanted suspenders, belts were too tight or too loose, and here, dangling like serpents from an eye level stand, was a thick cluster of suspenders.  The friend who was surprised when he saw I was going to purchase a pair of suspenders.  "Are you nuts?" he asked.  In retrospect, I think what it was (it was the eighties), however cynical I was as a human being, at that moment I was in the thrall of this handsome pair of silver buckled suspenders.  They guaranteed a meaning.  I wanted to be like Bill Cosby's Bill Huxtable, wise and funny.  I wanted to believe in the suspenders.  

The third Manhood oath (there are seven): support the cause of the revolution, wherever it is, however remotely connected you are.