Dirty sexy politicians

Better state right now: This isn't a post about politics or about this election or even about Sarah Palin.  It's about sex.  Sex appeal, really.

Over in some quarters of the conservative opinionizing world Sarah Palin's not just a heroine, she's a pin-up.  In fact, for many conservative opinionizers her heroism and her sex appeal are related, as if being good looking is a requisite virtue for a heroine.  But then the conservative opinionizing world, especially the blogging part of it, is dominated by Gen X men whose psyches, politics, emotional and intellectual development, and libidos were frozen at whatever point during the Reagan Administration they turned fifteen.  It's important to them, a matter not simply of pride but of their whole sense of self, that Republican women are the hottest women and Republican men the manliest men.

But just because their attitudes and reactions to a woman's attractiveness are about as mature as that of a group of high school sophomores who've gotten into a strip club using their big brothers' IDs doesn't mean the woman in question isn't attractive.

Sarah Palin's saying she and her family didn't rack up the bills for designer clothing Politico reported the Republicans reported she did.  Michael Luo and Eric Wilson have looked into it for the New York Times Caucus blog and have discovered that some of the stores where the Palins supposedly went wild don't have any records of any of the sort of wild spending they supposedly did.

Curiousier and curiousier, but you know?  I don't have any strong feelings about it, one way or the other, except that the story's distracting from the other more relevant story, that the Palins allegedly billed the state of Alaska for personal expenses and may have cheated on their taxes, although both stories might be of a piece, both showing that Sarah Palin has a habit of letting others pay for her lifestyle.  Whatever she or her surrogates may have spent to dress her up and turn her out makes no nevermind to me, unless it was a violation of campaign finance laws.  I'm only semi-sympathetic with Republican donors complaining that they didn't shell out to the party so that Sarah Palin could go competitive shopping with Cindy McCain and Willow can have a cooler wardrobe than Hannah Montana, because in fact they did---the gave money to help the GOP sell their product and selling politicians is mostly done on TV and selling on TV requires good visuals.  Dressing and making up Sarah Palin, and John McCain for that matter, is as important as getting the lighting right.  The amount spent, if that amount was spent, seems excessive, but what do I know?  In Jane Hamsher's professional opinion the same effects could have been achieved at a lot cheaper cost.  Still, it's the Republicans' money.

Nance and Erik have both kind of come to Palin's defense on this one, and I can see their point.  Women in politics are held to a higher standard than men, especially when it comes to how they look.  (Ask Joe Biden, though, about how standards are applied when it comes to debating skills.)  And men have it easier and cheaper.  They can get by with a couple of good suits, a change of shirts, and two ties, a red one and a blue one.

Erik writes, "Unfortunately, women in public life are judged on how they dress. And considering that her real national constituency is right-wing males like Rich Lowry who see her as a sex object as well as a political figure, it was not unreasonable for the Republican Party to make these expenditures."

Nance notes, "Sarah Palin is actually a very pretty woman. Beautiful, even. And so you get the basic irony at the heart of femininity — the better you look, the more you have to spend to make people think so."

Sarah Palin's beautiful?  If Nance says so.

As Archie Goodwin says, beauty is merely a matter of taste.  As my tastes run, I ought to be smitten by Sarah Palin.  I've always been a pushover for pint-sized brunettes.  When I first saw her picture I thought she looked like Karen Valentine from Room 222 and I had a crush on Karen Valentine when I was a kid.

My crush did not transfer.

Maybe it's the voice.  More likely it's the fact that she's a Right Wing religious fundamentalist kook.  Personality plays a big part in these things and while I don't believe a person's personality is entirely defined by her politics, all I know about Sarah Palin is her politics and they're not pretty.

But I think the real reason I can look at Sarah Palin and not see what I saw when I looked at Karen Valentine is that when I look at Sarah Palin I see the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States and I'm just not inclined to see candidates for Vice-President as sex objects.

I've written before about how creepy it is to speculate about the sex lives of strangers and no matter how well we feel we know them candidates for high national office are strangers.  But it's only human to respond to another human being who is beautiful and sexy.  There are lots of women, and men, who find Barack Obama both beautiful and sexy.  John Kennedy was routinely described as being as handsome as a movie star, which means that he probably had the same effect on people's libidos as a movie star.  Women swooned for Thomas Jefferson, and we all know the joke behind the plaque, "George Washington slept here."  And wasn't there a prominent journalist who gushed in print or on the air that Bill Clinton was starring in her erotic dreams?

If Nance says Sarah Palin's beautiful, then she probably is, according to most people's tastes.  And since she's youthful, energetic, a former beauty queen who's kept herself in shape, I don't blame Rich Lowry for sitting up straight in his chair when she winked at him during the debate.  The Democrats have a number of attractive women running for Congress this year.  If I thought one of them was winking at me, maybe I'd sit up straight in my chair too.

I wouldn't write about it though.

But here's the thing.  Maybe I'd have a Lowry, but I seriously doubt it.  I think Democratic candidates for Congress could wink at me till the cows came home and my likely reaction would be to think they had something in their eye and offer to run to the drugstore to pick them up some Visine.

Candidates for Congress don't make many guest appearances in my erotic daydreams.

Actually, no politicians do.

I'll go further.  Almost no women on the job, any job, feature in my fantasy life.  The exceptions are actresses and rock stars.  Otherwise, it doesn't matter to me if a politician, a cop, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a cashier, a toll booth attendant, a lumberjack, a TV anchorwoman, a cabbie, a jet pilot, etc. etc. etc. is objectively gorgeous.  All I see when I deal with her is what I see when I deal with a guy in the same job.

I'm not claiming any special virtue here.

I'm not boasting of exceptional self-control and mental discipline.

I'm admitting to a sexual hang-up I believed to have been caused by an inconveniently-timed emergence from the latency period and the shock resulting from the sight of Mrs Fulmer slipping off her high heels under her desk.

Mrs Fulmer was my third grade teacher.

And I was in love with her.

Mrs Fulmer was a brunette.  I don't think she was pint-sized.  In fact, I think she was rather tall.  Hard to say.  I was eight.  I had to look up to see the shortest sixth graders.  Seventh and eighth graders might as well have been basketball players.  Teachers were giants.  Mrs Fulmer might have not have been an actual giant, but she was long and leggy.  I've always been a pushover for long and leggy brunettes too.  And she wore glasses.  I've also been a pushover for brunettes, long and leggy or pint-sized, in glasses, which makes me wonder if I'm in denial about Sarah Palin.  But then I'm a pushover for blondes in glasses too, and redheads. Actually, when you get right down to it, I'm just a pushover, but nevermind.  What I remember most vividly about Mrs Fulmer is that whenever she sat down behind her desk she used to kick her shoes off.  I had a seat up near the front of the classroom and I had a good view of this fascinating habit of hers.  I used to watch for it hopefully every day.

For about a week.

It wasn't long before it began to embarrass me.  I started to think I was doing something wrong and I was afraid I was going to get caught.  Caught at what, I wasn't sure.   I just knew that whatever it was, it was inappropriate, although I probably didn't know what inappropriate meant.   I'm not sure I actually quit looking, but I think I made an effort not to.  That may have been when I developed a habit of assiduous doodling and boy, Freud would have a field day with that one, wouldn't he!  At any rate, it was after third grade when that complaint began to appear regularly in teachers' comments on my report cards.  "Lance is often drawing superheroes and fighter planes in his notebooks when he should be paying attention to his lessons."

Mrs Fulmer had a baby over the summer and didn't come back to school the next year.  I know I wasn't brokenhearted about that the way Linus was when Miss Othmar left teaching to get married.  And while I can't say I was relieved when my fourth grade teacher, Mrs MacLane, turned out to be a plump, matronly, decidedly middle-aged lady who didn't take her shoes off in class---at least, I don't think she did.  I never checked.---I'm sure I was happier for it.  Meant I was not shy and embarrassed around her, which was a good thing, as she turned out to be my all time favorite teacher.  I did not have a crush on Mrs MacLane and I did not have a crush on any of my teachers in the years that followed, including high school, college, and grad school.  It may just have been the case that I never had another teacher as attractive as Mrs Fulmer, but I believe it's because either out of self-defense or guilt or just a precocious sense of the rightness of it, from fourth grade on up I looked at all my teachers as teachers.

Which is to say as individuals on the job with work to do.  And my interactions with them, my judgments about them, and my feelings towards them were based on how they went about doing that work.  This was entirely the opposite of a mature sensibility and sensitivity.  It was all residual guilt and embarrassment.   But over time it became a habit, the kind of habit that's comforting and makes it easier to get through the day, and as I grew up and got out into the world and the number of adults on the job I had to deal with expanded, I transferred the habit to all women I dealt with while they were on the job.

The result is this polite, well-adjusted, gentlemanly, and seemingly harmless middle-aged schnook nodding attentively as you're writing the ticket, delivering your diagnosis, handing him his change, yelling at him for pushing another deadline, and pointing out where his brake pads have worn down and explaining why it's going to cost him an arm and a leg to get them fixed because he needs new shoes, rotors, and calipers too, and making your day and your job a little easier because he's not staring at your tits or trying to charm your phone number out of you or prove he knows how to do your job better than you do.

The result is also that if the Democrats ran a beautiful, youthful, pint-sized brunette and former beauty queen in glasses who was also incompetent, unprepared, dishonest, and quite possibly stupid, for Vice-President and she persisted in winking at me through the television cameras instead of giving coherent and substantive answers to the moderator's questions, the only reason I'd be sitting up straighter in my chair would be that I was reaching for something to throw through the TV screen.

Comments

[Mike]

I had a crush on Karen Valentine when I was a kid.

I was a Judy Strangis man.

[Bill Altreuter]

One of the interesting differences between Democrats and Republicans is that it is hard to imagine the Dems ever running a "beautiful, youthful, pint-sized brunette and former beauty queen in glasses who was also incompetent, unprepared, dishonest, and quite possibly stupid, for Vice-President". The piece in this week's New Yorker about how Palin was picked tells us everything we needto know, I think. The claim that McCain really wanted the odious Joe Lieberman is entirely credible, and so is the story David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, tells: "Charlie Black told McCain, ‘If you pick anyone else, you’re going to lose. But if you pick Palin you may win.’ ”

Try to picture a similar anecdote about Obama. Or any Democrat in the last 30 years, for that matter. Do you think for a moment thatthere is some faceless committee that could have told Obama he couldn't pick Biden? Who was going to tell Clinton that two southerners wouldn't work? I'm prepared to believe that there were people that tried to warn Kerry that Edwards was maybe not the best pick, but that's Monday morning quarterbacking-- Kerry's pick mostly made sense, and looked like the sort of thing that Kerry made up his own mind about. Hell, Gore picking Lieberman looks like a Gore thing. If Gore'd listened-- or even asked-- for advice from the sharpest politician around he'd probably have found someone who might have actually debated Cheney, instead of climbing into the back seat with him.

Contrast with the Republican picks. Bush pere picked Quayle, which is hard to account for unless you take into account the weird Bush family dynamic. You can hear it, can't you? "I don't know what it is, but there is something about that boy that I like. He reminds me of someone...." Of course now we know who that someone is-- a product of Yale and the Harvard B-school who probably also can't spell "potato". Reagan can't have picked Bush because he liked him-- Bush got the nod because the shadowy elders in the Republican Party felt that Ronnie could probably use a little Establishment back-up. They were more naked about selecting their Regent eight years ago. Dick Cheney conducted a national search in his breakfast nook and determined that Bush fils was such a chronic fuckup that there was only one guy for the job.

By the way, I don't thing Gov. Palin is stupid. Bush? An idiot. Quayle? An utter moron. Sarah Barracuda? No way. McCain's people probably think she's a dumb bunny, but when you look at the shambles they've made of their campaign it is hard to credit their opinion. They used Palin wrong, but that's not her fault. She'll be back, and when she runs on her own terms she'll be more effective.

[MaryRC]

I agreed with Nancy’s comments on both counts: Palin is beautiful and since women are judged by their appearance more than men, she needed wardrobe and makeup help on the campaign (and I am NOT a McCain-Palin supporter). If anything the fact that the RNC had to outfit her was a reinforcement of her hockey-mom image: she didn’t already have these clothes in her wardrobe, couldn’t afford them and was too busy working or campaigning to shop for them. What I don’t understand is why the RNC wasn’t more discreet. Couldn’t Cindy have slipped them her credit cards? She probably drops that much at Saks and Neiman-Marcus a month.

Have you seen that picture of Palin waving to the crowds in Maine? Everyone’s seen it, right? She’s wearing a form-fitting red suit and black high-heeled boots that I’d kill for (and her legs as well). Bet you don’t know that she’s walking next to Olympia Snowe who came to the airport to meet her. Poor Olympia gets cropped out of every picture of Palin in that suit. As someone who looks like Olympia more than Palin, I feel her pain.

What’s most striking to me, though, is the reaction of conservative bloggers, not so much to Palin as to conservative women such as Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan who have criticised Palin. These women are bitter. No longer young. No longer attractive. Jealous of a prettier, younger woman who’s getting all the attention from men now. Bloggers are saying things like “Put on a little weight lately, haven’t you, Kathleen?” Their commenters are worse.

I wonder how conservative women feel when they see how their male colleagues really feel about them, after all the service they’ve done to the cause over the years.

I’d like to find some PUMAs (if they still exist) and walk them over to a blog like Ace of Spades. “Look”, I’d say to them. “You thought the DNC and the media were mysogynist? THIS is mysogynist.”

[The Heretik]

The synopsis: Actually, when you get right down to it, I'm just a pushover, but nevermind.

[Matter-Eater Lad]

Palin's sour-faced demeanor and snide vocal patterns remind me of nothing so much as the meaner, more hateful and self-satisfied nuns I encountered during my years at parochial school. There is nothing remotely sexy or beautiful about such creatures, nor is there about Sarah Palin.

[Ken Houghton]

"Republican women are the hottest women and Republican men the manliest men"

Well, Nancy Davis Reagan (pregnant three months when she married Ronnie; take that Sarah "eight months later, I made a JD" Palin) did give the best blow jobs in Hollywood, according to Peter Lawford.

And you're wrong, btw—if they didn't spend $150K on Palin's wardrobe, then it's worse than if they had. (Kathryn also agrees that it's difficult to spend that type of money for two-three months worth of clothes, even at Needless Markup and Sak's, but notes that Palin's current answer—we bought it, it's just in the bottom of the plane, waiting to be donated to charity—is far worse, though at least it wouldn't constitute election fraud to have made the expenditure.)

If they bought $150K in clothing and accessories, it's not getting used, which is bad for Republican donors and candidates in less national elections. If they didn't buy clothing, but reported that they did in an FEC filing, it's fraud.

In the same manner as there was doubt that the Palins were attempting tax fraud until they tried to retroactively change the expense forms, the best case would have been for Palin to do her best Minnie Pearl imitation (all right, the tag on the hat would be $500 or $5,000, not $5, but otherwise...), not declare that they bought stuff that will be traded for hostages after the election.

Bachmann/Palin '12. Or, as I prefer to think of it, Bachmann-Palin Overdrive.

[Linkmeister]

Ken, the theme song could be "Takin' Care of Bidness!"

[Aelinie]

Everyone focused on her clothes because clothes are emblematic of style, and she's been campaigning on her style. She has no platform, only platitudes. So yes, her clothes are more than clothes, because they undermine her quote unquote authenticity. It's just like her kids, which she has used shamelessly to make herself appealing, then declared off limits when it didn't suit her. Valentino suit her. Ha ha.

[Ken Muldrew]

Palin would kill, absolutely kill, on the Survivor TV show.

[CJColucci]

Maybe "30 Rock" ought to do a "MILF Island" spin-off (pay cable) and cast Palin. If she won't do it, there's always Tina Fey.

[sabretom]

Lance: No memory of the 7th grade English teacher (when you were in 8th grade) Mrs Heiner?