Recently I started tracking the words “courage” and “courageous” in news stories.  At the moment there are relatively few stories about “courageous” men, with the possible exception of politicians (usually those who disregard their constituents’ wishes, it seems).  The top three stories this morning illustrate my observation that most of the people in these articles fit into one of three categories: 

1.  Women (“Hutchins praises women aviators”)

2. Athletes (“Courageous [halfback] Porter faces the storm”)

3. Victims of disease (“Sales in Vail will benefit boy battling cancer”)

This has been the pattern for quite some time.  I don’t detract from truly courageous women, athletes, or victims of disease, mind you, but is courage that uncommon among individual men these days?  If you go by what you read in the papers, you might think so.

UPDATE (3/15):  As if in answer to the previous question, today’s search turned up a great article from Australia’s Brisbane Times: sixty men (and five women) to be honored for acts of conspicuous bravery.  If you want to hear about men who dove into sinking helicopters, faced down terrorists, or took a couple of bullets to defend their family, this is it.  Wow.