James Wolcott on Scott Brown’s betrayal:
Scott Brown is but the latest of the beauty-salon graduates driving conservatives to spazzy distraction. As NYCweboy argues, the Republican Party has become the fan club for attention-deficit teenage girls of all ages and sexes, unable to decide between Fabian and Frankie Avalon, infatuated with Zec Efron one month and all moony over Rob Pattison the next, smitten with Mitt Romney one campaign and pining over Marco Rubio the next. “[If] if Republicans have a crisis of leadership, it may be because conservatives have become some of the most fickle lovers of new faces: as fast as a new handsome dude (usually white, but occasionally tan) enters the room, their love of last year’s model goes out the window.”
I think this goes pretty far. When Bobo talks about John Thune or Mitt Romney, he begins not by describing their positions, but their sun-chapped good looks and broad shoulders. The National Review had a piece a few years ago about (conservative) “Men We Love”.
There doesn’t seem to be much parallel to this on the left. Sure we heard a bit about John Edwards’ looks but it was mostly to make fun of his hair. And it’s hard to imagine anyone on the left getting off on a candidate the way Rich Lowry (and numerous others) did with Sarah Palin.
Update. And who can forget this?
And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know—and I’ve worn those because I parachute—and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count—they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.
CatStaff
Well, now, if we ran George Clooney . . . .
jeffreyw
But can they cook?
MikeJ
@CatStaff: He won’t run until his dad swears he won’t run again.
demo woman
Doug, Walcott does sum it up nicely and the Lunatics have taken over the repub party.
MattF
Um, yeah, well. Combine the image of GW Bush in a flight suit and John Yoo saying that the President could order that a military tribunal crush your baby’s nuts and you’ve about got it.
hal
The twelve year old girl in me says it’s Robert Pattinson (not Pattison) and Zac (not Zec) Efron.
Cris
I think we did at least acknowledge Obama’s good looks during the campaign. As you say, not to the extent that Rich “Starbursts” Lowry did, but the man did elicit some amount of swooning.
LuciaMia
Yikes allmighty, during the last primary season, even Fred Thompson got the starry-eyed conservative, Fox friends treatment. Remember them (seriously) talking about how he’d invigorate the campaign.
Tonybrown74
The worst thing I could have possibly done to my sex life is come out as a gay man.
Seriously, if I had stayed in the closet and become a Republican (and being black, you KNOW I would have been the GOP Magical Negro), I would be getting laid so much that I would barely be able to sit!
Damn!
Ash
This Wolcott guy spelled both Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson’s names wrong. THAT MAKES ME REALLY UPSET.
Ash Can
There’s been the occasional starbursty goodness in these parts over the good looks of Obama and other members of his admin, to be sure. However, none of us, to my knowledge, has expanded it into a full-length article, had it published in the New York Times, and been paid big bucks for it.
slag
Yes, but do any of them smell of Old Spice?
slag
@Tonybrown74:
I think this definitely fits under the “funny because it’s true” category.
Tonybrown74
@slag:
Aqua Velva, damnit!
Get it right!
bemused
Serial soulmates.
Corey
God, do we really need to dig up the embarrassing, fawning things we liberals wrote about Barack Obama?
SiubhanDuinne
So, wait. It’s not okay to say “retard” but it is okay to say “spazzy”? I simply can’t keep up any more.
DougJ
@Corey:
Yes, I’d like to see them side by side with the stuff written about conservatives. And, no, it doesn’t count if they’re written by MoDo.
MikeJ
@Corey: What? “Not as horrible as the others?” “Only moderately right wing?”
Mike Kay
Bobo is as effeminate as you can get.
Tonybrown74
@Corey:
Please!
All of our attractive male politicians are labeled as gay. John Edwards notwithstanding, the bullshit about Kerry speaking French and ordering a cheese steak with Swiss? Or Obama putting Dijon on his burger, not to mention Arugula-gate?
My personal favorite was when when Coultergeist tried to diagnose Bill Clinton’s philandering as some sort of gay, nurtured-by-his-mother (gay) psychological damage b.s..
But, please! Try again …
Tonal Crow
Present homophobia, latent homosexuality. And porn. Lots of porn.
Mike Kay
@Tonybrown74:
you could have been the next Larry Craig.
Ash
@SiubhanDuinne: This has always confused me. I call people “spazzy” all the time, as an adjective to describe a person who is always jumping around and freaking out and…spazzing. But then some British lady yelled at me in public because apparently spazzy also means retarded?
Ash Can
@Corey: Until the day I fawn over someone on the presidential ticket who’s there solely because of his/her looks, I won’t feel any need to hang my head in shame.
Aimai
Spazzy from spastic. Formerly a tech term for some forms of cerebral palsy.
— aimai
Mike Kay
@LuciaMia:
Oh Gawd. Remember how Tweety had an on-air orgasm, when talking about fred.
http://crooksandliars.com/2007/06/14/tweety-thompson-is-the-aqua-velva-man
Mike Kay
@Ash Can:
you didn’t fawn over Palin?
hal
My favorite was the flap over the fancy socialist berry tea that was said to be President Obama’s favorite.
de stijl
Back in 2006 when Tiger Woods was just a good golfer, he got into a buttload of PC trouble when he said he was a spaz on the green at Augusta.
Not a problem for the US audience, but apparently, “spaz” is a major no-no in Great Britain.
Our schoolyard insults are their quasi-taboo words and vice versa – twat and c#nt as examples.
jl
Leaving aside whatever psycho-sexual repression is going inside their dear little noggins, the fanboy approach to supporting candidates and celebrity politician sponsored fake astroturf ‘popular uprisings’ is what can happen when your party, or movement, makes not one lick of sense on not one damn issue, and your policy analysis is based on swindling the prole marks. And you think 2 plus 2 equals negative 10, or plus 100 or whatever is convenient at the moment.
slag
@Tonybrown74: Ha! I always get those two confused. Which means that I could never do Tweety’s job. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.
Tonybrown74
@Mike Kay:
I’m too cute to compare to THAT … plus I don’t do restrooms … at least not public ones.
Jeff
Two words: Dennis. Kusinich.
If he were GOP, they would be making “short is sexy” comments, or making sure he never appeared in public.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Nope, Dems just go after types that we can project ourselves onto; and then when they fail to be exactly like we want them to, we go looking for the next one.
bemused
When they fall, they fall hard. John Hinderaker swooning over Bush, “A man of extraordinary genius & brilliance approaching genius”.
Kevin Phillips Bong
@Jeff: And yet who has the hottest wife of any politician I’ve seen? By far.
bemused
@bemused:
He probably didn’t say genius twice but wanted to.
ellaesther
Okee dokee, point taken and agreed with. No doubt, and I think it has something to do with looking for a savior, rather than looking for solutions, and I could go on and on about that but first, one caveat. Ahem, to wit:
As a former teenage girl, I can say that I certainly was fickle, falling first for this one and then for that, each time, feeling feelings that were entirely sincere and momentarily blinding. Yes.
BUT BOYS AND MEN DO THIS, TOO.
Indeed, last I checked, boys and men were widely considered more likely to toss away true love whenever a newer, prettier face came along.
God, I cannot stand how, even among us liberals, one of the biggest insults you can level at a man is that he acts like a girl.
/end rant.
Norbrook
After reading some of the articles on the Right talking about how much better-looking their female politicians are, compared to Democratic women, I’ve come away with the impression that they look to their politicians for wanking material, not intelligent policy.
John S.
Good thing you threw in that italicized caveat or I would have roasted you for dinner. Because last I checked, this man has been with is wife for the last 15 years (and he’s only 32). And in all that time, I have never entertained the thought of doing such a thing. I find the very thought of casting away your soul mate for something “shiny” to be incredibly stupid. Or as an old male teacher of mine used to say, “Why go chasing cupcakes when you have an entire cake waiting for you at home?”
Many women seem to be doing a fine job closing the gap on tossing away true love whenever a newer, prettier face came along, though.
Mark
Definitely the line of the day.
Dreggas
Ummmm i always thought Michelle Obama was definitely a FLILF. I just never thought to write a long article about it.
jl
@ellaesther: Point taken on implicit sexism of the teen fan girl metaphor.
It is delicate subject for us, since most women grow out of that behavior, but a large proportion of men never do.
But, the idea that the biggest insult that you can throw at a man is that he is effeminate because of some arbitrary nonsense (ketchup or mustard on that burger?) is a reactionary modern GOP device.
The Dems have just adopted it as part of their codependent relationship with the Rove-ites and the idiot national affairs media.
Jay in Oregon
I’d love to, please, if only so I can keep my lunch down… *urp*
gizmo
Scott Brown made a smart move by defying the GOP leadership on his first important vote in Congress. He’s put them on notice that if they want him on board in the future, they have come kiss his ring and send some federal pork in the direction of Massachusetts. He’s positioning himself as a swing vote, which gives him enhanced political leverage. He may be a dim bulb, but he’s a cut above the rest of the Republicans— he’s clever enough to set himself up as a dealmaker / breaker.
Ash Can
We’ve discussed this here before — right wingers favor style over substance. They like pretty faces, platitudes, and jingoism, and they have a simplistic good-vs.-evil worldview. They’re anti-intelligence, anti-science, and anti-education. “No” isn’t just a one-word answer, it’s an entire political philosophy to them. They celebrate shallowness and superficiality, so it stands to reason that they’d be bowled over by what Wolcott so aptly describes as “beauty-salon graduates.”
demo woman
@gizmo: A friend told me that his office is receiving a lot of negative calls. Go figure. She did call and thank him for his vote and mentioned that she had not voted for him
Butch
We had a good example of conservative nutsoid here in Colorado today. There’s a play coming to Colorado Springs (which is a really conservative city) called Q Street or something along those lines. The billboard poster showed a pink puppet and the city forced the theater to take it down because the PUPPET showed too much cleavage. True.
DougJ
@ellaesther:
The conservative idols (except for Sarah Palin) are all men, so the only options are to compare conservatives to women or to gay men.
gwangung
@Butch: That’s Avenue Q.
And the wingnuts are gonna have a field day with Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist, It Sucks to Be Me and The Internet is Made for Porn.
matoko_chan
@Butch: I wunner what is going to happen when the movie version of Green Day’s jukebox musical hits marquees in the home of focus-on-the-family.
Its made from their album American Idiot.
:)
demo woman
@Butch: How much cleavage did the puppet show? lol
robertdsc
I never got that kind of vibe with FLOTUS until Inauguration Day. After that, I was totally in love.
That said, I was an early admirer of Palin, but her lack of brains was always a turnoff, not to mention that Lady Starbursts and I hold entirely divergent views on just about everything.
freelancer
@Butch:
Well with no streetlights on, how can anyone see the Billboards?
Ash
@Butch: That’s Avenue Q. I wonder what’ll happen when people actually see the show and discover the entire song about porn.
Colette
@Butch:
Jeebus. What next – will they have the police cruising people’s gardens in case they’re growing suggestive-looking vegetables?
MikeJ
@demo woman: I’m guessing it was Lucy the Slut.
slag
@DougJ: Poor defense. Ellaesther is right. If he wanted to avoid the sexism, Wolcott could have used examples from both genders to make the case.
But his overarching point is fairly accurate.
ellaesther
@jl: Well, I would like to say that I could absolve my Democrat brothers of this sin, but I canna!
A) It is still my experience that a kind of lazy, reflexive sexism exists generally across society, even among those I may consider allies in the fight for equality, and
B) Why are my Democratic brothers adopting Rovian tactics on my back (so to speak) anyway? They should be the first to decry such tactics! Or at least the second, with my Democratic sisters leading the charge.
@DougJ: I know that, but I think my rant was very clear that I was taking the specific example to a higher (lower) plane. And God knows, it would be an insult of an even greater order to accuse these manly manly Mcmanly men of being gay. The horror! James Wolcott could have easily said “adolescents in the throes of summer camp” and left it gender/sexuality neutral. But he didn’t and my guess (and I’ll admit it’s just a guess) is that it didn’t even cross his mind that flinging the insult “attention-deficit teenage girls!” at the mostly-male GOP was in any way a questionable thing.
And this is why it bugged me.
And now, if I have placed an ear worm in even a handful of heads that flares up every time someone says “throws like a girl” or “ran away like a little girl,” I will be happy. Yay!!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Voting with the Democrats is just a campaign commercial for Brown. No one can criticize him voting for a “jobs bill”. Now Brown can vote in lock-step with the Republicans the rest of the way and always point back to the jobs bill as a sign he’s willing to work with Democrats.
With our cockamamie media that’s all it takes. One visible “bi-partisan” vote and you’re instantly “reasonable”.
res ipsa loquitur
Frank Bruni has a mash note to Brown coming up in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine. (Remember Bruni’s mash notes to Dumbya helped get him elected in 2000.) It’s full of all sorts of rhapsodizing about Brown’s hunky looks. The party must have been completely freaked about Obama and has learned its lesson, i.e., they won’t be running any more old guys with heads that look like a bag of Walnuts. Anyway, this is from the Bruni thing:
In Falmouth, where a long line stretched out the door and into the 15-degree cold, Nancy Sawyer, 40, told me she was reminded of a Kiss concert from her youth. Ruth Eldredge, 49, said she had decided on her dream ticket for 2012: Romney for president and Brown for vice president, with a promise that they’d make Palin secretary of state. “They’d be so good-looking that people would just love us,” she said, meaning Republicans. “They’re beautiful!”
ellaesther
@slag: Damn, once again we make the same point but you do it much more succinctly. Curse you and your succinct verbal processor!
Someday slag, someday!
DougJ
@res ipsa loquitur:
At least Bruni is openly gay. That makes it more palatable than when Bobo and G. Gordon do it.
EEH
Really? But then again, it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Dreggas
@Butch:
That would be Avenue Q and they are hilarious. They are known for songs like:
“The internet is for porn”
“everyone’s a little bit racist”
and other non-PC stuff done by puppets. Google them, they’re great.
EthylEster
@ellaesther: And now, if I have placed an ear worm in even a handful of heads that flares up every time someone says “throws like a girl” or “ran away like a little girl,” I will be happy. Yay!!
A response that is at least as likely: another woman bitching about sexism.
slag
@ellaesther: Hey-Your rant was way more complete than mine was. And you raised the issue first, which definitely deserves props.
People don’t want to talk about sexism because (gasp!) they may be guilty of it. I know I am from time to time. Just like latent racism, sexism is pernicious and subconscious and deserves a good rant when it rears its head.
Cain
@John S.:
As geek, I find the whole dumping the true love for a prettier face happens all the time when I’m playing PC games. I leave a trail of unfinished video games behind me. I’m such a slut.
I have never thought of cheating on my wife, a disgraceful act that I would never recover from the shame of doing it.
cain
gnomedad
I sometimes fear this is correct. They have trained the base to love teh stoopid, and every time we point it out, it’s like free advertising.
ellaesther
@EthylEster: Well my goodness, we are nearly twins, in the name department! That’s just odd!
And yes, that’s always a risk. But what the hell. That would have happened anyway.
GregB
Well, that must be the case with this Sorba clown who was railing against the gay GOP group at CPAC. Sorba is a guy who spends more time thinking about gay sex than most people think about where to get their next meal.
Get a blowjob and shut-up pal.
ellaesther
@John S.: Well yes, that was my point! It cuts both ways! Indeed. And, really, I think that my even-broader-broad point was that lazy stereotypes are not useful.
I used to joke that I knew my husband (also of 15 years!) would never cheat on me because he is (and he will tell you this himself) lazy — but then I realized that such a lame joke was doing a real disservice to the best man I had ever met: He will never cheat on me because he’s a good guy. So now, that’s what I say. I am very fond of people who know that a promise is a promise (such as, for instance cain, and yourself).
Also, I wouldn’t roast me for dinner: I’m 45 and I suspect my meat might be a little tough.
ellaesther
@slag: Well, all right. /blushes/ We’re both fab!
It’s the crazy laziness of it that bugs me more than anything I think, because it serves to actively perpetuate something that I think a good number of us would like to see actually end.
Want to hear me really rant about stupid, lazy, gender stereotyping? Get me going on the Stupid Husband/Smart, Annoyed, Mother-esque Wife trope that appears to rule both our sitcoms and our commercials. Grrrr….
ellaesther
@GregB: Well, my first thought was (as it always is in even vaguely similar situations) that we will soon be learning of his closeted homosexual past. Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, etc, etc, and sooooo on. Self-loathing is a very, very powerful motivator for some.
Aaaaand I’ve officially become that annoying person who can’t stop posting on a thread, so I’m off to get supper on the table.
John O
Wolcott is an artist with the language.
I would read him more often but the VF pop-ups are so annoying I avoid it only for that reason.
John O
@GregB:
LOL, Greg, I put it almost exactly the same way on my own blog about a half-hour ago, just slightly different: Son, go suck a dick, and try to decide if you liked it. You’ll save everyone and yourself a lot of hassle.
Comrade Dread
They’re looking for a Republican Messiah: a stalwart neo-con, with a square jaw, a little manly stubble, thick hair, and good rugged looks. Got to be tall. Preferably white with a manly build who works out by punching hippies, damn it.
Someone who can recite tired 30 year rhetoric with conviction in a deep voice, with a rock hard will that refuses to bend even in the face of overwhelming evidence and opposition. Someone who knows that true fiscal responsibility requires the government to cut taxes, while not cutting a dime from any of the important projects. “What’s that? What are the important projects? Everything we do, because damn it, we’re Americans. And Freedom…”
A true man’s man who never met a war he didn’t like because that’s where the true character of a man is tested, not that he’s ever been within 1,000 miles of a battlefield, but if he were, those damn Al Qaeda would piss themselves, and he’d have Osama in a day, but his is a far more important task…
To go on Fox News and encourage people to send these troops into places they don’t care about because… Freedom. Is there a plan for post-occupation? Hell, no, because everyone wants Freedom and it’ll work itself out in the end, and if it doesn’t, it’s because the f***ing pansies in the Democratic party didn’t clap loud enough.
John S.
@cain:
Ah, but that is not true love — that is lust.
@ellaesther:
I agree with you completely.
The funny thing about “good” guys is how many of us have been shit on by the same women who like to complain about not being able to find “good” guys. And once we’ve been snatched up by an equally good woman, our existence is erased from the single female zeitgeist, thereby perpetuating the myth that there aren’t a lot of us.
It’s quite the paradox.
jl
As the High Krug of the NY Times OpEd page has truly uttered:
“Real men don’t think things through.”
Verily.
Comrade Mary
@Ash Can: Well, there was this briefly aired Obama campaign commercial. Worked on Jane Hamsher — well, for a while.
Tax Analyst
@de stijl:
Those sure were simpler times for Tiger, weren’t they?
Tax Analyst
@Butch:
Well, I think it just serves that slutty pink puppet right. Someone ought to take her strings and whip her with them.
The nerve of that nasty little strumpuppet.
mcd410x
Mrs. Mooseburger is apparently going to help welcome Leno back to The Tonight Show.
That makes me want to vomit. On both counts.
cat48
I think Obama’s pretty hot, but I don’t write about it or think about it that much really. He’s a married man with a beautiful family. The nicest looking first family ever. IMHO Conservatives do seem more apt to share their thoughts whether you want to hear it or not.
DougJ
@John O:
Yeah, I agree. The VF site is annoying, but Wolcott is great.
kommrade reproductive vigor
OK, that makes ME feel uncomfortable. We just need to get the fRighties in big South Park Tuk ‘r Jeebs man pile so they’ll relax and leave everyone the fuck alone for a little bit.
Anne Laurie
@Ash:
The Wikipedia entry is kinda fascinating. As recently as the 1960s, there was still a general prejudice in America that all cerebral palsy victims were “retards” who might as well be institutionalized immediately. My parochial high school had a pilot volunteer program where some of the girls helped with the endless hours of physical therapy then considered radically cutting-edge for CP kids, and some of our working-class parents worried this would just “prolong the suffering” for families who would do better to accept “God’s will” and dump their “defectives” into care before everybody got too emotionally attached. I’ll admit I still feel a little guilty when I catch myself using ‘spaz’ as an insult, but I figured that was just because I’m old.
28 Percent
@Butch: That would be Avenue Q, which features the song “The Internet is for Porn” (so grab your dick and double-click) and explicit onstage puppet sex.
fraught
I’m not looking forward to reading Bruni about Brown. I do know that one of Bruni’s best girlfriends (in a gay way) is Emma Keller the wife of Bill Keller, the Executive editor of the Times. I can imagine the phone call when he let her know he wanted to do the piece on Brown. Two giggling teenagers gushing about a cute boy.
bob h
If the Republicans had run someone with the sex appeal of Barney Frank instead of Brown, HCR would be done, and they would be doing some preliminary surveying on Mt. Rushmore.
Butch
Sorry I checked out there for a while – I knew the name had something to do with a road. It’s true, though – the Springs did such a good job of voting down any sort of tax increase that streetlights are going dark, firefighters and police are being laid off, and most of the rec centers are closing. At least I don’t live there…but I’m going to have to find that website.
p.a.
Don’t forget the love affair with the reanimated corpse of Fred Thompson. Fred effing Thompson
twiffer
@Kevin Phillips Bong: seconded, thirded and hell, i’d even remove the “politician” qualifier.