I walked through the

room as The Today Show

ran highlights from the Red Sox- Rays baseball game from the night before. Since it was sports, I stopped to watch instead of averting my eyes, plugging my ears, and running from the room.

I really try to avoid any contact with weekday morning "news" shows. I never hear any real news and what I do hear makes me temporarily crazy. When a show is designed for a particular demographic and you are an outsider, things like that happen.

A clip showed the typical baseball fight; a bunch of players grabbing each other and the rest just standing around. After the video ended, this dimwit host, some guy with good hair and nothing under it, sighed and told Ann Curry how he had to explain things to his son every time this happened.

I'm really getting tired of all this. Little boys understand conflict. It is part of their makeup. Male mammals, including human ones, compete at something their entire life. As we have tried to improve the lot of women over the last 40 years, for some reason we have deemed instinctive male behavior unsuitable.

This makes no sense. How boys act should have nothing to do with the plight of girls, little or big. Yet, we insist that boys have to be quiet, explain their feelings, and get in touch with their feminine side.

How did we get here? I understand television's role in this. Since women historically watch television throughout the day, any show that wants high numbers must cater to their interests. Thus, Donahue, which morphed into Oprah, which set the bar for all morning TV currently airing. Simple advertising can explain why we now have Dr Phil and The Viewto contend with.

What I can't figure out is how this got to be a national attitude. When did we decide testosterone was unacceptable? These changes came about when men still controlled every aspect of business and government yet we stood by and allowed the change.

I realize we think different. Anyone who ever told a woman something funny that happened on the golf course and got a blank stare understands this. Anyone whoever got called a pig for staring at some over- endowed sunbather for more than a millisecond can relate.

The problem has nothing to do with women. Women are programmed a certain way. Little boys understand this in the second grade. We realize no one can predict their actions or figure what one of them might do in a certain situation. Most men accept this as a part of life's weird struggle and move on.

The problem occurred when men in power allowed a culture change with no resistance. Things that most assuredly would lead to a world where men name women as their best man at a wedding and have "man showers instead of bachelor parties."

Those days are upon us, and nothing can move us back to the days where men were accepted as strong creatures worthy of praise. We are responsible for making ourselves irrelevant. As soon as they learn how to clone themselves and program the remote, we are toast.