What's the deal with all those wimpy-sounding Mediterranean guys on public radio? In Canada, we have Jian Ghomeshi and his weakly Q sidekick, Mio Adilman. In the States, there's NPR's Ira Glass, David Sedaris, and the rest of the sardonic This American Life posse.

So much for the days of the authoritative, deep-voiced male announcer (I'm thinking of Edward R. Murrow or the guy who narrated all the movie trailers). The trend today seems to be the more neurotic the better-- less George Clooney, more George Costanza. My favourite male radio personalites are empathetic, intellectual, silly and self-deprecating. In short, everything men are typically discouraged from being.

No surprise that many of these guys have had to address their masculinity over the years. In an interview with The Advocate, Glass (admirably) embraced the label "thinking gay guy's sex symbol" even though he has a wife. Sedaris often muses about growing up as a gay Greek kid in a North Carolina suburb. And Ghomeshi was memorably teased by a comedian for being blessed with "the eyes of an Arabian princess." But living in the margins can foster great art and comedy, as Paul suggests below. Some of the funniest films of the last few years have starred anti-heroes such as Seth Rogen, Steve Carell and Micheal Cera, who make us laugh by exposing their vulnerabilities -- and their less-than-ideal male bodies.

I ran into two of my favourite radio personalities last weekend at the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal, where Jian Ghomeshi conducted an on-stage interview with Jonathan Goldstein, a This American Life contributor with his own show, Wiretap, on CBC radio.

Wiretap is a fictional take on Goldstein's life, and a spiritual descendent of the "2000 Year Old Man," the classic Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner shtick. Goldstein plays the straight man, a less frantic Woody Allen who solicits guidance over the phone from a cast of friends and family.

In his new book, Ladies and Gentleman: The Bible, Goldstein re-writes the Good Book in the same satirical vein. Take Adam and Eve. Since every village has a mayor and an idiot, Goldstein writes, the first couple's roles in Eden must have broken down like so: Eve: mayor; Adam: village idiot. At the event, Ghomeshi asked Goldstein why this casting of gender roles seems to be a recurring theme in his writing. Goldstein agreed that he tends to draw upon a long comedic tradition that imagines women as competent, curious and wise, and men as clutzy, stubborn and simple -- think of the Honeymooners, The Simpsons, Home Improvement or Everybody Loves Raymond (in a previous post I suggested that pre-Obama presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush often perpetuated this meme).

I don't think Goldstein gives himself enough credit. The male characters in his stories are more nuanced than that. His young King David doesn't slingshot Goliath out of patriotism or macho pride; he slays the giant because he wants to be a comedian and thinks it will earn some laughs). His Cain isn't a cold-hearted killer; it's his crippling insecurity that drives him to fratricide. Men don't have to be caveman cliches to entertain  or impress us, and Goldstein need look no further than himself and his public radio pals for proof.

Here's Ghomeshi singing about making a "lousy boy":

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Dan Levy is a journalist and public radio addict living in Montreal.