Today's name calling rhetoric would be at home in the 1950s

The latest ad hominem attack in the news comes from, who else?, the former president of the U.S., who called the four Capitol police officers who testified about the horrifying Jan. 6 attack "pussies."

I guess that thin blue line just got a bit thinner, at least in the minds of our deranged former chief executive and his unthinking cult followers. Hold on. I guess I am engaging in some personal attacks, as well. But at least my choices of adjectives could be supported in a persuasive essay, while the term used to characterize those officers is clearly rooted in sexism.

"Deranged" means mentally unsound or crazy, and a senior citizen spouting inane comments at people he has never met is just a version of "Get off my lawn!" "Unthinking" is easier to defend, though not thinking things through after gathering information is not limited to the Republican base. And a "cult" is made up of followers so devoted to one person or idea that those followers are beyond reason or arguments.

The former president doesn't possess a huge inventory of insults -- he mostly repeats the same tired dozen or so, depending on the gender or race of his targets -- but his latest epithet is telling.

After all, what could be worse for a male authority figure than to be likened to a woman? And what could be more predictable than an old man defaulting to an insult that has been common for 70 years or more?

I would guess that attacking men by comparing them to women will be one of the last vestiges of misogyny to disappear from American discourse. I vividly remember coaches disparaging male athletes with similar terms, or simply shouting, "You throw like a girl." I was told numerous times to "man up" or act like a man. 

If you have watched any of the female athletes in the Olympics in Tokyo this past week, "like a girl" has to ring a bit differently in your head. The many strong, determined, and smart female athletes, from an astonishing range of nations, continue to shine, to empower, and to inspire.

The sexism of insulting males by calling them some version of the female anatomy is made clear when you start to imagine how effective calling a female cop a "dick" would be in diminishing her. 

Not much.