House of Eratosthenes

MediaMatters has put together a list of right wing bloggers and pundits who have actually deigned to notice that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the President’s nominee to succeed Supreme Court associate justice John Paul Stevens, is a frump-a-dump.

The Blog That Nobody Reads didn’t make the cut. Oh well.

Our concern is not so much with the Solicitor General as an individual, but with the trend overall. And this, we submit, is something that should concern everybody…especially career-minded women who happen to be gorgeous. The pattern would seem to indicate they need to stop wasting their time, at least with regard to any career endeavor adjudicated by a progressive. It seems there is a memorandum somewhere forbidding career advancement for any female endowed with as much pulchritude as Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s outta the question.

There is some measure of twisted, inexplicable pride wrapped up in ignoring the obvious when it’s right in front of your face, and has been paraded before you for decades. Or, as our resident gadfly Arthurstone says…

That would be a perfect slogan for liberals. “We are decent people because we ignore facts.”

And that’s why I consider this to be a serious issue even though I really don’t give a fig whether the most powerful female progressives in our government look like Alyssa Milano. The existence of the “uglier than O’Connor” memorandum should be proven or disproven…since that would be discrimination…something progressives say they oppose. But if such a memorandum does not exist, then Arthurstone’s ignorance is metaphorical for something else; it’s a manifestation of something larger and more dangerous.

Just go shopping sometime — not at Wal-Mart though. Someplace else. Look at the women you find there. How many are ugly? How many are babes? I’d put Sarah Palin at about the eightieth percentile, meaning one-in-five are even hotter. (Sorry Sarah.) How many look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donna Shalala, Janet “System Worked Perfectly” Napolitano, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor? Maybe one in four. Our Secretary of State may be the beauty contest winner, so let’s make her the waterline. It rises to one in three.

If you were to task me to fill all these positions with women who were qualified for them, without regard to how they looked, I’d never be able to stack them with women who uglier than two thirds of the general population. I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not unless I was really, really trying.

See how Palin’s been treated? I don’t think that’s because of a Couric interview. I don’t think it’s because she’s a conservative or even quite so much because she kept Trig. What you’re seeing, in Alaska, is the attitude our hardcore liberals have against pretty women. An appealing female countenance is a form of success and they cannot stand success. Well, you look at Kagan and see what you want, but that’s what I see.

I would never be able to go out in that shopping mall and find a woman who looks like Elena Kagan. So yes, you’re right Media Matters, the remarks could be called crude and classless. If they came from someone in a position of real power rather than from a bunch of shock jocks, I might join you in demanding some kind of apology. But if you’re trying to convince me that noticing the trend is indicative of some ugly personality defect, that this is the picture of a mindset we do not want making important decisions about things…sorry, you march in that parade alone.

Arthur has shown where this other kind of thinking, this “count me among those who ignore the facts” thinking, comes off the rails. If you have apathy, and you want to advertise that you have it so people might be led to believe you’re decent, then you have to care about people noticing your apathy. Which means you have to lose it. You have to become a walking breathing lie, you have to become the opposite of what you are pretending to be. And that is why, IMO, progressives seem to be entrenched in this habit of hiring and promoting ugly women. They are eager to put up meaningless symbols that ostensibly show what wonderful and decent human beings they are.

Probably to compensate for something. Yes, just let that thought percolate awhile.

Update: I see Harvey didn’t make the cut either. He should’ve. What’s the deal, MM? You’re getting sloppy.

The relative attractiveness of liberal heroines aside ….

Jeffrey Lord hits us with the real issue.
- philmon | 05/13/2010 @ 13:16
Ok, Morgan, let me get this straight.

Obama has nominated another left-wing zealot to an important public position w/ a lifetime appointment – someone who has never even been a judge – to the panel which has the final word on my constitutional rights, no less…and your paramount concern is that she is physically unattractive?

No further comment needed.
- cylarz | 05/14/2010 @ 08:41
I never used the word “paramount.”

I see it as, we’re up to what: Thirty years since the last female was nominated to any position of authority by the hard left, who didn’t look like a plate o’barf? That’s a long time. They’re working awfully hard to get a message out, even if they don’t have the balls to say what it is word-for-word, it seems almost rude to not put some effort into figuring out what it is they’re trying to say.

Also, nice looking ladies are people too. They’re a minority, too; they deserve career advancement, too. Someone’s gotta stand up for them…and their silky curvy thighs, flat stomachs, heaving bosoms, shapely necks, piercing eyes, chiseled features, and their long, flowing hair. C’mon, they’ve been disenfranchised long enough.
- mkfreeberg | 05/14/2010 @ 12:18
You haven’t succeeded as a woman unless you are a woman and ugly. Being attractive is a way of having people drawn to you without having overcome anything, and a liberal must, must , MUST be able to trumpet some kind of perseverance through shortcoming in order to define something as a success. Nevermind that every successful woman who is also attractive has already overcome liberal feminist bias, which is a hundred times more confounding in the professional world than a little male chauvinism.
- Andy | 05/14/2010 @ 12:49
Yeah, their relative attractiveness is not Morgan’s primary concern. It’s just something he’s noticed that’s bugging him, and I find it a bit curious, too — that just about any woman these people think is worth her salt has to appear unfeminine. I mean, after a while you have to wonder about such a massive collection of coincidences.

Since he recently discussed it (at length) and a new example just popped up that supports his thesis, he brought it up again. It’s kind of an amusing side issue, and he’s right. Are they trying to tell us something? Probably. They’re ALWAYS trying to tell us something.
- philmon | 05/14/2010 @ 13:14

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Leave Elena Alone!Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Leave Elena Alone!
Thursday, May 13th, 2010