Today the Atlantic Wire offered a guide to a curious species that thrives in the nation's capital: the mega-macho male political staffers described as brawlers despite having jobs for which a significant portion of daily responsibilities is getting in fights on Twitter. One of the men whose manly persona we profiled was Ed Rollins, who first made a name for himself in Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign. Rollins responded with a small correction to one of the categories we used to rank these staffers' manliness: "That One Fight He Almost Got In." For Rollins, we noted that he actually had been in a fight -- and a TKO is what killed his dream to be an Olympic boxer. But Rollins sent a friendly note that pointed out he's been in more than one real live brawl:

Unfortunately I had a 167 amateur fights (lost 2) and a lot more street brawls without a referee and at 69 I feel every one.

We asked for pictures, but alas, Rollins had none. He did, however, provide a bit of insight into how Washington, D.C. can be a drain on your manliness quotient:

I tried to put my boxing career behind me (50 years ago) and be taken as a serious public policy wonk. Somehow it didn't work. When my wife married me she thought she was getting Sylvester Stallone but instead got a latter version of Orson Welles.

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Elspeth Reeve