Conservative Hotties

Well, honestly, Professor Farrell, as I understand it’s not as if you yourself are possessed of matinee-idol good looks. And to indulge in such blatant objectification of conservative intellectual luminaries? For shame, sir.

…Okay, Joyner it is. But only because of his old-school detailing.

The original competition appears to be unfair because “11) Liz Stephans from The B-Cast” is computer generated.

You mean that he has more than three fingers? Creepier still.

Does Jonah Goldberg play Peter Griffin?

I am voting for Eric son of Erick as a write in.

I am going to go with Alfonzo Rachel.

None of the above.

The only thing that makes them smoke is their furious wanking.

You have Manatee-idol good looks?

Jack Strocchi 06.02.10 at 10:49 pm

“O’Rourke once observed that you can tell how powerful a social movement is by the beauty of its female supporters. Every one loves a winner. I guess thats why he became a Left-wing hippie, to be at one with the flower children. Then jumped the fence to become a Right-wing yuppie and network with hard-bodies”.

‘Observed’, in the sense of ‘said’. Probably just freudian projection by O’Rourke, who jumped to the side that’d pay him better.

Alfonzo Rachel being the only one who isn’t actually ugly, he gets my vote.

Sure, I’m missing the point, but I thought I’d give it a go.

Jonah Goldberg – definitely. And anyone who says otherwise is either a communist or a fascist, or quite probably both.

Interesting crossover with this morning’s lead article in the Times Higher Ed, on the value of ‘erotic capital’ in social interaction:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=411840&c=2

I had to click through the original article to understand what you were going for here, but this is fucking brilliant.

I have to go for Alfonzo Rachel. Though I have to otherwise disagree with Timothy Scrivens has it right: sincerely answering who is the best looking _is_ the point.

Those Zendik folk sound rather cool; unless of course the laser-beams coming out of their eyes fried the brains of the reporter.

More on Zendik, and a letter from a former member. Not that I really think the T-shirt means Skye knows anything about the group.

I vote for Newman Jonah Goldberg.

Did you make the picture of Pantload Goldberg so dark to try and stop him from running away with the competition? Typical left-wing fixation on equality of outcomes.

Something that never occurred to me before looking at that particular photo: Is Jonah Goldberg gay? That’s the gayest pose I’ve seen in a while, and he seems to pull it off naturally.

I can’t decide on a closing line:

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

or

“Irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible NOT to!”

Conservatives are much less prone to the dichotomizing of women as serious/sexual than liberals. Liberals tend to classify women as either serious (i.e., ugly, not sexual objects, can be Cabinet secretaries) or sexual (can be interns). The girls you wed versus the girls you bed. Wellesley versus Pine Manor. Etc. Thus, liberals can’t have this sort of contest about women in “respectable” roles, because “respectable” women don’t have sexual natures. Conservatives don’t see a conflict between being serious and being sexual.

Now I know hordes of outraged liberals will rise up and insist that Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards et al. did not dichotomize women as I have described. Bill Clinton thought Donna Shalala was very attractive and John Edwards is really interested in Rielle Hunter’s thoughts on public policy. Uh-huh.

I actually want to thank y81. I was worried my previous comment might have been found stupid, pointless, and/or offensive. Feeling better about it now!

Alfonzo Rachel’s a reasonably good-looking dude. The rest of them are overweight schmucks who can’t even carry off a modified Brooks Brothers look. What’s the point of being conservative if you don’t make enough money to buy from Paul Stuart (I’m not asking for sophisticated retro styles from the likes of Garrick Anderson, but you should be able to get your fat ass into Paul Stuart or The Andover Shop)? Why not be a hippie, if you can’t even enjoy the pleasures of elitism (and wearing fine clothes is of course something an elite can and should do)? And they can’t seem to comb their hair either.

“But I think James Joyner sort of carries off the B-squared look.”

No, not really. He’s admittedly is cleaner and neater than the other guys, but his style is stiff – he reminds me a bit of a Mormon FBI agent (and that’s certainly not a good thing).

@43 – surely there are more of them in the South, where it is generally hotter than the coastal haunts of the latte-sipping elite; and thus, ipso facto, unless they are inside an air-conditioned building, on average right-wing women are hotter. To be depressingly literal.

To be less so, it would seem entirely logical that adherents of a set of beliefs that overtly approve of traditional sex-roles would pay more attention to manifesting their sexuality in the time-honoured visual ways; and thus if one were to make a simplistic and one-dimensional judgment based on visual appearances alone, right-wing women would be highly likely to be ‘hotter’, as measured by such conventional standards. Whether that means anything to you is the question.

Hmm, and yet there is such a thing as aesthetics, and notions of ‘conventions of beauty’; these do of course change across time and place, yet anthropologically one could identify what such standards were in a place such as ‘right-wing America’ and draw conclusions therefrom. As to Ann Coulter, the most that might be said, in the immortal words of Alicia Silverstone, is that she is somewhat Monet.

What kind of adjective is “smokin”?

Come, come, that really is too much. You will be telling us next that supermodels get their jobs because of their sparkling personalities, and that their faces are photoshopped on random whim. Wikipedia, for all its sins, had a rather well-referenced article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#Determinants_of_female_physical_attractiveness

“You will be telling us next that supermodels get their jobs because of their sparkling personalities”

The women whom the US right-wing likes (which I think IS a relatively coherent concept – they do like certain identifiable and predictable characteristics) don’t much look like fashion models and are actually quite dissimilar to current high-fashion models.

Beauty queens, yes, fashion models, no. I would agree that “attractiveness” is an incoherent concept generally, and that also applies to American liberals. It’s not incoherent for US right-wingers because they are now partially a regional party (of long-established white people in the South) and because they control a TV network (Fox News). Remember that beauty pageants are very important in the South, and serve many political purposes (high-status Southern men, particularly those aiming for political careers, specifically seek out beauty pageant winners for wives). Beauty pageant winners are often from prominent politically-involved families and having a beauty pageant winner as a family member is a significant status symbol. Also, beauty pageant winners are sometimes preferred (or have a leg up on others) in such opportunities as political interns and so on.

That is, those who determine the concept of beauty on the Right are actually a fairly limited group of men: the judges at Southern beauty pageants (and judges at Southern pageants are often prominent local politicians) and a small group of senior executives at Fox News.

Since American liberals don’t have this type of organized recognition of beauty (beauty pageants play a massively more limited role outside the South, for example), their concept of beauty is naturally much less coherent.

I pick Jonah Goldberg, because of the giant disembodied, three-fingered hand about to yank his still-beating heart from his manly chest.

But not because it is 96 to 4.

Re: photo #2 –

Damn, Paul Lynde sure got fat!

Lemuel @38,

Re 36, is there a word for something that does not even rise to the level of trolling?

¿Cómo? Was it the taz reference? OK, make it konkret-Leserinnen if you must.

“(Which reminds me that my late father, who was quite a clotheshorse for a rural educator, told me when I was about to go to London for the first time, “You’ll see the greatest ties in the world.”)”

Quite true. It’s always a surprise to discover that in old-line London shops they actually carry whole lines of not just regular ties, but wedding and summer-party ties as well.

“What’s the point of being conservative if you don’t make enough money to buy from Paul Stuart (I’m not asking for sophisticated retro styles from the likes of Garrick Anderson, but you should be able to get your fat ass into Paul Stuart or The Andover Shop)? Why not be a hippie, if you can’t even enjoy the pleasures of elitism (and wearing fine clothes is of course something an elite can and should do)? And they can’t seem to comb their hair either.”

Most of them look like they need not just Paul Smith, but probably all the way to bespoke. Jonah certainly does.

“But I think James Joyner sort of carries off the B-squared look.”

He’s not close to skinny enough to wear the shirt collar (tab?) he’s wearing, and the tie is very questionable. Usual advice for his type is to get loads of custom-tailored button-downs shipped from Hong Kong tailors.

“Any substantially large group will disagree to some extent on the relative attractiveness of a moderate-sized handful of people and leave you with results like “63% of respondents thought that Jessica Alba was hotter than Kirsten Dunst”. (Numbers made up to illustrate the point.) Do you really think it makes any sense to say that 37% of the people who answered that question were wrong? ”

Dude, I don’t know what you are thinking, but I think Kirsten Caroline Dunst >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Jessica Alba. Dunst is a goddess. Her performance in Elizabethtown defines hot. A goddess.

“But yes, the beauty the pageants are selling is a very bland, cookie-cutter (mostly) white version of good looks, “pretty” rather than “drop-dead gorgeous.” Sarah Palin is a great example – she’s not striking, Ava Gardner OMG gorgeous!”

Striking, Ava Gardner gorgeous is precisely not their definition of beauty on a day to day basis (they might admire that type of thing in magazines or media, but it’s not what they’re regularly encountering nor is it what they’ll reward in a pageant).

come hither you young whippersnapper and I’ll thrash you with my belt for playing on my lawn

Hott.

@Myles 64: The whole point of making up a middle-of-the-road number was to acknowledge that people would take both sides of that comparison, and that the fact that people take both sides says something about the comparison.

On the other hand, if I asked people which one was taller, there would be two major differences: first, a substantial number of people (even if familiar with both of the people involved) would say that they didn’t know, which amounts to acknowledging that there is something for them to not know. And second, if someone actually performed or looked up measurements, nearly everyone would accept that as conclusive (unless they thought the measurements were faked or something) — including a substantial number of people admitting that they were wrong and changing their minds.

Neither is true of a subjective quality.

If I were to be serious, definitely Alfonzo Rachel. dark skin + salt and pepper = mmm mmm

Otherwise Jonah Goldberg… I think he’s trying to do the ‘shocker’ but thought there were three holes