Letters to the Editor
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Think about her expressions...
It's not her age. It's the grotesque and unnatural expressions she reveals on her 60-year old face.
Like her positions, it seems she puts on the face she feels is appropriate. She does NOT seem comfortable or relaxed in how she is, not calm or steady, rather she seems overemotional, strained and tense at almost all times. NOT a presidential way to be.
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More fool us..
In his poem The Lady's Dressing Room well-known eighteenth century misanthropist Jonathan Swift wrote:
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous Fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!
We are all fools if we forget that all of these godlike creatures running for the White House are just human beings like us.
Media images are carefully crafted to exclude the quotidian, so we never hear that Mrs. Clinton had to cancel her engagement because she had a menstrual period or hot flash, that she is or is not taking hormone replacement therapy, that Obama smokes cigarettes (should be a cinch in North Carolina),
that Huckerbee was suffering from diarrhea brought on by the Iowan diet (the nonverbal kind, that is), or that Guiliani's prostrate surgery has left him impotent and therefore lusting for power of other kinds, or that Edwards was suffering from flatulence on the campaign trail, or that Romney has a hairy ass.
The media just does not do that kind of stuff, but of course it is all still there in we voter's private thoughts. (Some of the above examples are invented for illustrative purposes.)
But WTF does it have to do with the office they are running for? Surely we are grown up enough to vote for them according to how their presence in the White House will affect government, and what kind of leader of the Free World they might make.
Why do we have to put up with journalists relentlessly trivializing politics?
Maybe at the next debate we can ask them if they fold or scrunch their toilet paper. It could give a clue to how they would handle Iran. Or maybe not.
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This whole furor is a sad indictment of our current culture...
And it is indicative of a much larger problem: the fact that we never see any real people represented in the media anymore (be it TV, film or print).
This is especially true for America. The faces we see are smooth, airbrushed, airtight, and quite thoroughly lifeless. It's frightening. It's wrong. And although it's more often true (and more harshly enforced) for women, men are not immune.
Is it any wonder, then, that we're shocked and disturbed when we see the face of a real woman, who looks her age, and without the mask of photoshop, flattering camera angles, or surgery.
I find this so sad and disheartening.
I'm a New Zealander, and I grew up watching British and American television. As a general rule, British television was better written, cleverer, and more finely acted. But what was truly amazing -- revolutionary! -- was the fact that British actors looked real. As often as not, they had bad teeth, or bad hair, or blemishes -- in short, they looked like you or I.
(I'm not sure if this is still the case for British telly, living as I do now in Canada with little or no access to British TV.)
But I miss that.
And as I head inexorably into middle age, and watch the lines and furrows multiplying on my face...I look around at the billboards, the covers of magazines, film, TV programmes...and they say nothing to me about my life.
I don't see anybody there that I know. I don't see my peers, or my mother or my grandmother. We have been banished to the shadows.
Seeing the strength, courage and resilience with which the women in my life greet every day, this feels like an incalculable loss, and worse, an ugly betrayal.
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Partisan Pontification
Had the photo been of an identical Republican candidate, the defenders of truth (sic!) would have been swooning over the depth and substance displayed by an obviously sober and mature leader. "This is no pin-up girl," they would have cried over patriotic background music. "This is a woman of substance and power. Just the person we need leading this country!"
I swear, those fools couldn't say anything genuine about Hillary Clinton if the lives of their entire families depended on it. They, and a significant number of Salon readers, are victims of Hillary Derangement Syndrome.
Too bad. So sad.
http://danaruns.typepad.com/danarunstheworld/
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Hag hell....
It's well known that women are turned out to pasture sexually a good 20 years before men. A man with wrinkles, jowls, wattles, sagging flesh and gray (or disappearing) hair can still be a contender. This is no doubt an evolutionary by-product, one of these harsh hard-wired facts 'o' life we live with, but that doesn't make it fair or pleasant. Every once in a while we read a story in the paper about some young guy in his 20s or 30s marrying a woman in her 70s or 80s. The reverse happens all the time and is scarcely newsworthy; the only reason the old woman/young guy story gets in the paper at all is because of the freakish, titillating National Enquirer grotesquery of it, right up there with "Circus Fat Lady Eating Contest!" We imagine the crone bride's revolting aging female flesh in a sexual act and are gleefully repelled. All the while, we have guys like Fred Thompson and Alan Greenspan recently reproducing, which means it's highly likely that these liver-spotted spotted gargoyles actually HAD SEX recently, with a woman young enough to be fertilized.
The point is this: yes, we laugh at bad pictures of male politicians, but not because they look OLD.
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Ageism
Why do we let the aged run our country but they can't get hired anywhere in the US except for WalMart?
This goes for men and women. Some of the wisest, kindest, *most effective* managers/employees I've known were over 60, but once they lose a long-term job, they are OUT for LIFE.
Our superficiality is one of the most damamging things to our society. No wonder the rest of the world considers Americans to be superficial, uneducated rubes.
Oh, and FYI, don't fool yourselves into thinking you *get* to choose between Obama, Edwards, and Clinton.
Clinton has the money and the connections. The very fact that she's most vilified by the right tells you she's the big threat. She'll be the candidate that you will have to vote for unless you want the GOP to win again.
That is all.