On The Upside, He Looks Less Like Skeletor Than Giuliani Does

“Doesn’t Fred Thompson pretty much look like a basset hound who’s just taken a really satisfying shit in your hall closet?”

There is no need to comment on this thread. There will be no need to comment on this thread. This. Is. Perfect.

Please tell me someone is hiring you to write copy for one of the Dem candidates, Belle.

Who died and made you God?

Jesus?

Anyway, outstanding Smoove B shoutout. Maybe all Fred Thompson speeches should begin with, “Girl, let me break it down for you.”

Who died and made you God?

Jesus?

Not an entirely inaccurate summation of the Mormon doctrine of exaltation, there, but somewhat lacking in detail. Still, thanks for the props.

To me Thompson looks like a horrible old man with a sagging face.

Which is why the basset hound thing is perfect.

Jill Hennessy: not a Republican

It partly reflects some weird equation of “gravitas” with “sexy”, the former itself an only-in-punditland concept as for example, it is also considered to be a characteristic of Dick “4th Branch” Cheney. While the pundits have managed to find some actual women to source their Fred admirings, I think it’s also transference of a male pundit Daddy complex that they don’t want to admit to onto a more plausible source. The kind of people who assured us in 2000 that the “grown-ups” were now in charge.

One thing to keep in mind is that Thompson looks old and frail lately. Five, ten years ago, he had the deep-voiced, courtly, gravitas thing going, and that’s what people are thinking of when they talk him up.

Heck, forget the Harmon/Lowell/Hennessey/Rohm etc. question.

I’m betting you’d pick Steven Hill (“Adam Schiff”) over “White House Chief of Staff Harry Sargent.”

Belle, Angie Harmon? Well it could have been Hillary Clinton and her Expando pants suits so something may be said for your taste.
And speaking of basset hounds !

Angie Harmon is a Republican? That ruins my day.

I suppose his trip to see Thatcher does suggest he might be willing to be nice to your senile elderly relatives.

First of all, are women voters, taken as a whole, really so much like retarded kittens in our motivations?

Well, voters in general often seem to be more or less that way, so, by deductive reasoning: yes.

Seriously, I think one could outline a lot of the political discourse of the last seven years with phrases like

IS IT CAN BE TAX CUT NOW PLS?

and

O NOES! MUSLIMZ!
DO NOT WANT!

Women loooove the way Thompson gums his steak.

Presumably Mrs. Thompson has been meeting with top-rank frumpification consultants, though there’s still going to be the problem of all the old photos.

I’m not an American woman voter though of course, so my opinion matters not a jot for this one.

I suppose it’s a kind of equality to scrutinise the looks of male candidates unflatteringly, but wouldn’t it be better to just leave the whole issue alone as irrelevant?

However the quoted description of Thompson does make me want to throw up. I have never in my life considered a ‘soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold [me]’ as a significantly desirable quality in a potential life partner, let alone a politician.

It’s the Republican Overton Window strategy applied to the relative hottness of presidential candidates. It is of course unthinkable to suppose that Bill Clinton or John Edwards are repulsive-looking creeps who drive women voters away, and it is unthinkable to suppose that Fred Thompson and Donald Rumsfeld are the pin-ups of any young woman today (or any time in the last thirty years). But that’s what Overton Window chatterers are for: they say patently, monstrously mendacious things to make their teammates sound realistic by comparison.

Wait…so people, and especially women, are supposed to vote for Fred Thompson because he’s attractive, but John Edwards’ good looks make him a sissy who won’t be able to stand up to our savage enemies?

I’m going to suspend my judgement of Thompson’s “dreaminess” until I see him in a codpiece

That’s the true measure of presidential material.

Jill Hennessy has a twin sister, too, and they are both Canuckian.

Just sayin’…

The stink of fear hangs over my poor liberal friends at Crooked Timber as they try to cast doubt on Fred Thompson’s manifest hunkiness.

“I care how they smell.”

As Steve Benen pointed out last week, Chris Matthews vouched for Thompson’s odor. I would like to again call for scratch-and-sniff cards so all voters could make their own judgments rather than relying on secondhand reports, but I haven’t got much traction on this issue yet.

I must pile on. Belle, that post was a thing of beauty.

While the pundits have managed to find some actual women to source their Fred admirings, I think it’s also transference of a male pundit Daddy complex that they don’t want to admit to onto a more plausible source.

P. O’Neill and Arc beat me to it: This “attractiveness” stuff is really about whoever gives Chris Matthews–who, for all intents and purposes, is a retarded kitten–the biggest stiffy.

I have to say that Thompson scares me more than any of the other Republican candidates, not because of this bizarre supposed sexiness, but because he’s the only candidate who isn’t obviously insane or espousing obviously insane policies.

Ginger, he hasn’t had the need to do so yet–but he will, he will.

I mean, just imagine what Thompson’s first debate with the other candidates will be like. Romney says something along the lines of “I’d nuke the Iranians, send their corpses to Gitmo, and then nuke Gitmo–in your FACE Giuliani you Christopher Street pansy!” Then it’s Thompson’s turn. What the hell is he going to do? Say “Well, maybe we could find a resolution to the problem that doesn’t involve military force”? Not in your wildest dreams.

The guy wants the nomination of a party that has gone insane. He’s going to have to get with the program.

Are there any military historians who are not far-right lunatics?

Just askin’

I’m not anxious to have sex with Fred Thompson myself, and I don’t think that sexual attractiveness in itself is a particularly meaningful predictor of how women or men will vote (though qualities related to or associated with it (eg, charisma, vitality) might be). That said, the record does show that many attractive and accomplished women have been sexually attracted to Fred Thompson, whatever Belle thinks of him. Why? I confess I don’t understand it, but I suppose that it should offer hope to many men.

45: John Keegan seems conservative in the sense of “square” and Tory, but he’s always seemed sane. Perhaps that is a misimpression derived from the sympathy for the common (in both senses of the word) soldier that comes through The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command, despite the latter’s focus on the highest echelons.

So I’m the only one who thought Serena was hot?

The eXile’s War Nerd is close enough..

Keegan is another 9/11 sanity casualty, alas. In recent years he’s been on about the Muslim peril and all in ways largely indistinguishable from any Bush or Blair flack. This doesn’t of course affect the real merits of his earlier works, it just means you should be careful in his recent writing.

I hate that fucking teevee show. Hate hate hate hate. Hate everything about it. I’ve seen maybe a dozen episodes of it, and at first I only disliked it somewhat but the degree that I hate it has grown and grown so I’ll be damned if I’ll ever watch a thirteenth. Even Angie Harmon, as conventionally pretty as she is, pisses me off now because I associate her with that awful series.

As for Thompson himself, that bag of hot air, I saw that cigar-smoking-and-smirking act of his where he bitched about Michael Moore’s Sicko, and all I could think was “Jesus, what an idiot.”