Men’s Day Looms as Parade of High-Profile Men Doing Wrong Grows

What the day is meant to cover

Events are planned for Thursday. The day encourages reflection on broad patterns in male experience: higher suicide rates, shorter life spans, a higher likelihood of violent death and lower performance at all levels of education.

This year's theme is "The Future is Everyone." The columnist finds that awkward given the news cycle.

The names in the column

She lists a multi-nation line-up. In the United States, she points to a president who, despite what she calls a crushing performance review from 125 million constituents, is still preoccupied with the chandelier count in his billion-dollar ballroom.

In the UK, she writes, TV stars and writers Russell Brand and David Walliams have been "confronted with the carefully catalogued consequences of their actions" and conclude the real victims are themselves. That is her characterization of their responses.

She also names Jensen Huang, whom she describes as the "godfather of AI" and the builder of a chip company over three decades. The column offers a scathing aside about his undoing it all. This report does not repeat that claim.

In Australia, she says, the week has brought another round of argument among the country's best-known cricketers. The dispute is over who knew what, and when, about sandpaper in a bowler's jocks in Cape Town eight years ago.

The columnist's verdict

She asks what purpose the finger-pointing, flounce-outs and mic-drop moments serve. Whether framed as justice, righting wrongs or promoting a book, she calls it "a handful of guys who feel they were personally wronged" and who are now torching the joint again to correct the record.

What grates most, she writes, is the shamelessness. She describes "relentless, insistent, main-character energy" in men who, once proved wrong, return as victims instead of retreating in self-loathing.