House of Eratosthenes

Yes, there are women who are successful in the Democratic party, but none of them are successful because of their feminine wiles, none of them have played up their sex appeal the way Palin has. MSNBC’s female host is Rachel Maddow, who is completely good in all manner of ways that good can be good–but still I must ask: Where are the policy babes?

I know, I know: all of you are saying that it’s a good thing it’s like that, it’s a sign that liberals have integrity and blah blah blah. But I think you are kidding yourselves. It’s a sign of another thing: that liberal men are wimps who can’t handle the hot potato that is a combination of feminine sexuality and female political brilliance. [emphasis Melissa’s, and mine too]

Oh yeah. Hillary Clinton is a “policy babe” and so were Donna Shalala and Madeleine Albright — the liberal men can handle them. Hillary can deviate from the liberal playbook a little bit, too, if she wants.

But let’s just say, if you have a daughter at a dating age that looks like Sarah Palin, you might keep the shotgun a little bit handier than if she looks like Hill, Donna or Madeleine.

I think the issue is a compromising weakness. Not an overwhelming one, just one that makes a death blow possible. And convenient. A “reset switch” (heh), if you will.

Let Hillary and Donna and Madeleine and the two Janets run around saying whatever they want — if anything uttered by them is disagreeable, at least we know at the end of the day we’re all superior in one regard. Such a “kill switch” is an important feature to an insecure mind.

And so we get these oh so powerful women on the democrats side, who are also oh so capable and oh so articulate and oh so intelligent. But, they’re ugly. Not a beauty contestant among the whole lot of them. Throughout years, decades, generations. As I’ve observed before: Such a track record of consistency can only be achieved by means of constant, consistent and concentrated effort. Is it rude to notice it? It seems rather rude to ignore it!

In this “all Palin all the time” news cycle, which I state again was not my idea, not started by me, and I don’t even approve of it…there is a fascinating conversation going on at Daphne’s haven of jadedness. In which Joan of Argghh! makes a pointed observation:

Like Morgan’s last comment, I see way too many people swayed by the irresistible Narrative of the media and the blogosphere that says Palin is . . . whatever.

But you provide nothing about your own assessment based on what Palin has presented to your own personal sensibilities. How do YOU think about her candidacy? And why?…You point us to other accolades you’ve given about Palin as a person, but offer no thoughts except “hell no!” about a Palin candidacy.

This is being directed at conservatives who are slow to accept, not at liberals who are quick to reject. But I see the criticism fits both camps. There is a quick, surface-deep, almost lazy dismissal…actually, it is lazy. Just of a sentiment that could best be described as “of course, we all agree that she should go away” — when we do not all agree with that, if we all agreed it wouldn’t be necessary for anybody to say anything. Quite to the contrary: The ankle-biters are getting frustrated and frenzied because the good-looking doltish woman is hanging around too long. Won’t she just go away already!

She needs to go away already or else…what, specifically, is about to happen?

I understand the conservatives somewhat. The fear is easily defined: She’ll get further along in the nomination process than she should, and with all her baggage she’ll cause damage to somebody else. Maybe proliferate the reputation conservatives have for being unsophisticated, incurious buffoons. Obama will cruise on into the campaign season deciding all of a sudden He knows how to use a Blackberry once again, and pick up all kinds of votes from independents who yearn for a political leader who easily digests challenging details…which they then duck. Oh, who cares how it all works, those are votes, dammit!

Well, I disagree with the conservatives because being on the defensive has been shown to be a losing strategy. And anybody who dismisses that point reveals himself to be paying far less attention than he’s trying to project.

But the liberals on the other hand. They have been caught, once again, projecting. Fear Of Strong Women! That modern plague of misogyny, which is supposed to be the target of their glorious crusade, one of just a few.

They’ve got it worse than anybody. As Melissa puts it:

Liberal men suffer the worst Madonna-Whore complexes of all. They cannot handle mom and sexy in one package–mostly because that woman would never be interested in them, therefore, they reject what they cannot obtain. As betas they’re stuck with the mousy and miserable women. You know, the women at the Code Pink march or the Amen Pew at church. Either way, they don’t think of obtainable women as sexy. Sexy equals scary.
:
[T]hey need to recognize their impotent desire and juvenile objectification and start engaging real women. Take a class. Get some skills.

Isn’t it time to get over this? This fear, envy, loathing…it’s all so destructive and keeps good women out of politics on both sides.
:
In a more reasonable world, Sarah Palin wouldn’t be causing this fuss. Well, no more fuss than any other person in political life. But she’s breaking barriers. It’s time to let them fall and engage women in a real way.

It’s hurting our nation because it hurts our perception of strong leadership. Cowardliness in liberals who refuse to notice “hey, that woman is uglier than the South end of a dog facing North” — is perceived by other liberals as courage. This has been a constant liberal drumbeat for a generation or two now, that you’re a good person for not-noticing something.

A passionate interest in whether a woman is good looking or not, is perceived as some kind of noble apathy. People who care deeply are perceived as not caring at all.

It’s all done to define a selected demography, of straight men who notice if a woman has taken the time to look decent, and dismiss them. Not their perceptions or their inappropriate lustful desires or their chauvinistic worldviews, but them. As people. Such people are substandard, irredeemably so, and are to be dismissed from our society…as we “progress” toward making that society all-tolerant and all-accepting. So a perfect society being built for the benefit of some and for the neglect of others, is perceived as the perfect opposite of what it really is…as a society in which “everyone” has a home.

That isn’t what the vision really is. It’s a place where everyone has a home, only if you re-define what “everyone” really means.

And when you boot out the men who enjoy looking at pretty ladies, you have to boot out the pretty ladies as well. They can be tolerated, only grudgingly, but they aren’t allowed to count. And their opinions cannot matter.

Not very egalitarian-looking after you study it awhile, is it? But that’s the modern world we have been building, and so far, continue to accept.

This part of the comment is most revealing:

” . . . played up their sex appeal the way Palin has.”

In all the clips of all the videos that you can find of Palin, I haven’t seen one scintilla of her “playing up” her sex appeal. That’s a subtle straw man thrown in there as if to say that the only reason she seems to hang on in the spotlight is because she knows how to flirt.

Just go check out information offered by the experts on male/female relationships to see what constitutes using ones sexual wiles to woo and attract others. And this also begs the question: If Palin is “playing up” her sex appeal, then is she only trying to attract male voters? Even lesbians who like the “lipstick” variety are not going to get past Sarah’s values enough to want to vote for her on sex appeal alone. Conservative males might fantasize about sleeping with Jessica Simpson, but you’d have to threaten castration to make us vote her into any political office short of dog catcher.
- Moshe Ben-David | 11/25/2010 @ 05:27
Wurtzel is a non- Palin fan. I probably should have included that in my intro, since she makes that clear in the first paragraph of the article linked…but I didn’t include that in the excerpt. That might be a mistake on my part.

You’re generally more likely to see a Palin fan quoting a non-Palin fan, without going on the attack about what’s quoted, than the reverse. We tend to be broader, deeper thinkers. Capable of “take what you like, and leave the rest.” By definition, I’d say. But anyway: Yes, good point, I had tripped over this as well when I was reading it. Palin has played up her sex appeal by…oh, let’s see now:

– Being naturally pretty
– Appearing on the cover of Runners’ World in shorts (which, as lady runner shorts go, are somewhat on the modest side). Oh, and that was after her ticket lost…

I find it almost freakish that nobody even seems to know what she looks like in a bikini. We know that would be a scandal — we know it for a fact, since it was played up as a “scandal” when somebody photoshopped her that way. Reporters flying up to Juneau to go through trash bins…nobody found a bikini pic? Not a single one? When that’s probably the #1 thing they were trying to find? Todd’s eyes only, I guess. Just darn.

So anyway. Played up her sex appeal. This part of it says more about Elizabeth than it does about Sarah. What we’re learning here, I believe, is what the girls have been telling us: They can be mean and catty to their own. Kind of a “crabs in a bucket” thing going on with being too pretty. The accusation is that she’s been playing up her sex appeal, but what’s really behind it, I think, is an accusation that she hasn’t toned the sex appeal down to make other women feel included. Which, I think, must be something expected and demanded on that side of the gender line.

It would be awfully cool if a gal chimed in on this with her comments. A non-Sarah-Palin-hating gal, or at least, someone who can remove the emotionalism involved with Palin matters from this broader issue with girls putting the hate & hurt on other girls for being too pretty.
- mkfreeberg | 11/25/2010 @ 07:51
If I may take this in a slightly different direction…..

There’s something considerably more insidious at work here, I think. The fact is that the normal everyday world we live in is populated not with media stars of whatever stripe, but the women we see everyday.

One of the discouraging facts about this is that communities like college towns are filled with disturbingly gorgeous young babes, many of whom are leftie beyond description. A few years of living someplace like Berkeley, or Madison, or Austin, etcetc, will give you better look at the realities of “liberal” society than a lifetime of watching news on the teevee. What swiftly becomes apparent is that pretty girls rule, no less than they did in the Fraternity/Sorority college class of the dear dead ’50s.

This produces some interesting and predictable effects. The run-of-the-mill-to-pathetic-looking leftie women are of course still consumed with envy at those who won the birth lottery in the looks department (or are, as a former girlfriend put it, “Airbrushed from birth”,) but their politics causes them to swallow their bile in the interests of Solidarity. The Young ‘n Pretty add this leverage to their assumed moral superiority by denying the egregious advantages already accruing to beautiful young women. And everybody falls for it.

“Liberal” young men, already victimized by the mystifying assumption that being pussy-whipped is the most honorable estate available to men in general (exemplified by videos like this one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X88jCXzX0VA&feature=player_embedded) respond to their hormones by allowing themselves to be treated like dogs – and poorly-treated dogs at that. Simply stated, the things I’ve seen in these situations are enough to make a monk out of a sex addict.

I like (it with) girls a lot, and as Buck has pointed out, we got to come through the culture when there was enough sex available to make you embarrassed. I’ve had literally dozens of girfriends, skinny-plump-pretty-plain-you-name-it, and even a few who loved me in the bedroom and were happy to cook and generally treat me well. Nonetheless, it’s become more than apparent to me that men in general would do well to consider that there are far worse things than sleeping alone, and sacrificing your self-respect for pussy heads the list. All men, not just “liberals,” could profitably learn this, and it would change the entire culture in one generation.

To bring this back to the point, what needs to be considered is that Lefties, just like (sadly) everybody else, are ruled by the little head instead of being informed by the big head. Their female politicians are in fact revered because they don’t threaten the holders of the moneymakers, and those holders convince their “men” who they’d better vote for. Still, never forget that ,as Dostoevsky put it so well,

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles.
- rob | 11/25/2010 @ 10:22
And by the way (he continued,) as much as I’d personally rather see the beauteous and womanly Sarah Palin continue in her role as conscience and kingmaker than enter the Presidential sweepstakes, I think this is probably true:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3QqO8EXd-II/TO4oXBQKtxI/AAAAAAAA6Zk/oSPGybRmcxA/s1600/sarahpalinmirrordone2.jpg

Good ‘un.
- rob | 11/25/2010 @ 10:43

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Liberal Men Are Wimps Who Can’t Handle a Real WomanWednesday, November 24th, 2010

Liberal Men Are Wimps Who Can’t Handle a Real Woman
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010