On the Scene: Male Call

ON a morning when Washington’s Mall is not a particularly congenial place for her, NOW leader Patricia Ireland is in her element. NOW activists are waving red “Fight the Radical Right” signs at the long lines of Promise Keepers passing by on their way to their rally. Members of the Lesbian Avengers are cavorting in purple satin capes. And Miss Ireland is surrounded by a dozen seven-foot tall cardboard reproductions of supposedly damning quotes by PK leaders, labeled at the top, “Patriarchy Keepers.” Miss Ireland warns the assembled media that PK “call[s] for an authoritarian, theocratic society where Christian men control everything.”

An example of what has Miss Ireland so exercised is not too far away, on his hands and knees in front of the PK stage, wearing a bandanna to hold back his shoulder-length black hair, a silver-cross earring dangling from his ear, biceps that rival those of Buster Douglas bulging from his T-shirt. He’s Bob McAllister, age 34, a paramedic from Broward County, Florida, who was adopted by an Irish Catholic family as a Mexican orphan and is known to all his friends as “Taco.”

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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ON a morning when Washington’s Mall is not a particularly congenial place for her, NOW leader Patricia Ireland is in her element. NOW activists are waving red “Fight the Radical Right” signs at the long lines of Promise Keepers passing by on their way to their rally. Members of the Lesbian Avengers are cavorting in purple satin capes. And Miss Ireland is surrounded by a dozen seven-foot tall cardboard reproductions of supposedly damning quotes by PK leaders, labeled at the top, “Patriarchy Keepers.” Miss Ireland warns the assembled media that PK “call[s] for an authoritarian, theocratic society where Christian men control everything.”

An example of what has Miss Ireland so exercised is not too far away, on his hands and knees in front of the PK stage, wearing a bandanna to hold back his shoulder-length black hair, a silver-cross earring dangling from his ear, biceps that rival those of Buster Douglas bulging from his T-shirt. He’s Bob McAllister, age 34, a paramedic from Broward County, Florida, who was adopted by an Irish Catholic family as a Mexican orphan and is known to all his friends as “Taco.”