If you are still worried or concerned about Dean's "aarrgh!" you might want to check out "Butching up for Victory" in
The Nation.
"[The internet] may account for Dean's current standing, but it's not why he stuck out from the pack almost from the moment he announced. Dean did it, as conservative columnist George Will notes, by "discern[ing] what liberals want: attitude."
"Is she a real woman; is he a real man? These may be the most important questions in American politics today, precisely because they are rarely asked. Polsters don't measure a candidate's butch appeal, but political strategists do. And ever since Ronald Reagan rode roughshod over that wimp in the Mr. Rogers cardigan, the Republicans have played the gender card very effectively against the Democrats. . . . the party of give-'em hell Harry has taken blow after blow to the primal parts."
"Dean has skillfully cast himself as a manly alternative to Bush's ripe macho. That's no mean feat for a dove."
"Dean is the only major Democratic candidate to evade the sissifying barbs of the GOP's shock-jock surrogates."
"GOP strategists have had [enormous success] in reaching voters on a symbolic level. The Republicans have adapted their Southern strategy to the new terms of sexual politics. What they once did with race, they are doing today with gender."
"It's no surprise that the Republicans excel at this craft. The corporate class they draw from has had to think long and hard about the primal aspects of identification. Knowing how to manipulated sexual fantasies is crucial to the process of shaping consumer demand. With the same practiced expertise, the Republicans have stoked white male anxiety . . . White guys are 39 percent of the electorate, and by now only 22 percent of them identiy as Demnocrats."
"Most Americans have felt the pinch of stagnant or declinig wages, but white men aren't doing especially badly. Only 18 percent of them earn less than $30,000; a third make $75,000 or more. If white guys lean Republican, material deprivation isn't the main reason. Their feeling of persecution derives from an entirely symbolic insult. The prestige of white macho has definitely taken a hit, and the resulting sense of loss moves many issues."
"Now factor in 9/11, with its gross insult to America's twin stiffies. Real as the danger of terrorism is, it has coincided with the so-called crisis of masculinity to produce a powerful perception that we need a strongman--rather than a strong person--in order to survive. The result is a politics of cartoon virility. But a symbol that doesn't meet actual needs soon seems like an empty artifice. That's what Dean is betting on. He's out to embody a masculinity that feels substantial rather than ceremonial. In other words, he's trying to be butch but not macho."
" . . . People kept in a state of constant stress will sacrifice their best instincts and even their real interests for the illusion of safety . . . That's why the Republicans put such energy into arousing anxiety and displacing it onto Democrats. If Dean is to beat the odds, he will have to counter this strategy in every move he makes."
"It won't be easy. It doesn't take much to foment fear in white boys."
"We may resent the fact that Americans regard the penis and its symbolic projections as synonymous with strength. But psychic reality cannot be denied."
The media's loud dismay at Dean's (non-concession) speech suggests to me that Dean really is threatening them in their own game.