MY WIFE just got a new dishwasher for us. She didn't tell me, she just got it. I discovered this the other day when I came home from work and saw it, but it was difficult to learn any more at the moment, since she was in the living room with her best friend, Ilana, planning a party at our house that weekend for 25-or-so of the Little League parents. I didn't know about this, either.

"Oh, you'll love it," she said with a wave of her hand, and turned back to Ilana, who was animatedly saying something like, "I think the pasta station should go in the playroom."

And I remember chewing this over and thinking, "You know, there's a lot I disagree with about Arab society, but, on the whole, you've got to admire the way they treat their women."

By the way, I think that's how the whole thing started over there. Some Saudi prince came home, saw new drapes in the tent, and snapped. "Okay, that's it. Let's have your driver's license."

Now, of course, no one sane has anything but contempt for the type of guys who refuse to allow their alleged loved ones any place in the world except behind walls. But there is something to the idea that American men have gone far too far the other way for the last 30 years, and have become marginalized and superfluous objects of scorn.

Commercials, TV shows, and movies almost always portray the father as a moron, a bumpkin, an out-of-touch

I don't know when we lost it, I just know that we have, and by we, I mean American men, and by American men, I mean me. Because I don't think this kind of drugged, fugue-state, hairless, eunuch-y complacence exists in quite the same way around the world.

The Divine Mrs. M.'s brother-in-law is Argentine, and we were over at their house for dinner recently. My wife and her sister were gabbing about a dress in a magazine, and Roberto leaned over to me with his manly accent, and his Douglas Fairbanks Jr. smile and said, "Ah, you know, Laddy, what does it matter? The dress, she is off in a minute anyway, eh?"

Whoa. Not exactly something you'd expect from, say, Alan Alda. I turned to see if my wife was staring daggers at him, but instead she and her sister were . . . laughing! Tittering behind their hands! My wife! The two of them giggling like schoolgirls performing "Three Pretty Maids Are We."

I was about to take her hand gently and say, "Have you lost your mind?" When Roberto, unsure that his first foray had been sufficient, added, "And then, after you finish, on the way out, you step on the dress, eh? Try some of this sauterne, Laddy. It's from the pampas."