Everything Old Is New Again
by digby
Fergawdsakes. It’s nice that the mainstream media is noticing this, but it’s hardly new. Emasculating liberals has been a standard attack from the right wing for at least forty years since Ronald Reagan ran for Governor of California at least:
“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah”
Snotty New York Times columnists have made their careers on it. Bloggers have spent years writing about it. Books have been written about it, even.
And (oh God, there goes my lunch) remember this?
Reductively speaking, Thompson stands as the Daddy Party’s dream Daddy–although a Daddy of a very particular type. Forget the nurturing, “compassionate conservative” model of Bush’s 2000 candidacy, which has been roundly discredited on the right. Forget, too, the blustery, “Bring it on!” swagger that W. adopted after September 11, a little-guy machismo one also sees in Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Thompson’s manliness is laconic rather than feisty, a style more John Wayne than Jimmy Cagney. “He’s a big man,” says Duncan. “He has a way of filling or dominating a room.” And, as all of us recall from our schoolyard days, big guys like Thompson don’t need to run around picking fights, talking smack, and constantly reminding us of how tough they are because, well, look at them.
Certainly, the Thompson talk in both cyberspace and the traditional media is a study in hero worship, with grown conservatives swooning like cheerleaders smitten over the manliness of the varsity quarterback. There is much rejoicing about the senator’s growling voice, his studly cigar habit, and his physical size. My favorite bit of macho Fred-worship making its way around the Internet is a widely circulated joke about the title of the recent film 300, in which a small troop of Spartans holds the line against the massive Persian army: “If Fred Thompson had been at Thermopylae, the movie would have been called 1.” (Reading posts like this, it’s unsurprising that, according to USA Today, 64 percent of Thompson’s supporters are male, the highest percentage for any presidential hopeful.)
Among more serious journalists, The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has developed a particularly intense man-crush on Thompson, penning a series of breathless valentines about the fledgling campaign, starting with a 6,000-word profile in April that gushed: “As we spoke, I was struck by the fact that Thompson didn’t seem to be calibrating his answers for a presidential run. On issue after contentious issue, I got the sense from both his manner and the answer he gave me that he was just speaking extemporaneously.” Nor is it only the conservative media getting high on the smell of testosterone. The creepiest musings about Thompson’s “sex appeal” thus far have come from NBC’s Chris Matthews, the machismo-obsessed id of the Washington media, who recently cooed: “Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man’s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of–a little bit of cigar smoke?”
More adolescent members of the chattering class, meanwhile, have taken to drooling over Mrs. Thompson, whose penchant for low-cut, form-fitting ensembles already has buttoned-down political types buzzing. Msnbc’s Joe Scarborough recently created a stir when he and guest analyst Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly indulged in some lascivious speculation about whether the curvaceous Jeri’s fitness regime makes use of a stripper’s pole. Tacky as the comments were, they were essentially envious. “That’s what a Hollywood career will do for you!” enthused Crawford.
Inevitably, with his official entry into the race, Thompson will lose a little luster as he morphs from above-the-fray candidate-in-waiting to flesh-and-blood (not to mention bloodied) combatant. Still, the lure of his manly charms should not be underestimated. As Bob Davis, a former Thompson staffer now chairing the Tennessee Republican Party, puts it, “When you put your children to bed at night, and you’re laying your head down on your pillow, this is a guy people would trust to protect their backside no matter what happened.”
Seriously, can anyone over the age of 15 not know that this is always one of the central themes of every GOP campaign? It what they do. In fact their worst pundits get so confused in their gay bating sometimes that they make complete fools of themselves over it:
DEUTSCH: Off the air, you were talking about Bill Clinton. Is there anything you want to say about Clinton?
COULTER: No.
DEUTSCH: No? OK. All right. Did you find him attractive? Is that what it was?
COULTER: No!
DEUTSCH: You don’t find him attractive?
COULTER: No. OK, fine, I’ll say it on air.
DEUTSCH: Most women find him attractive.
COULTER: No.
DEUTSCH: OK, say it on air.
COULTER: I think that sort of rampant promiscuity does show some level of latent homosexuality.
DEUTSCH: OK, I think you need to say that again — that Bill Clinton, you think, on some level has — is a latent homosexual. Is that what you’re saying?
COULTER: Yeah. I mean that sort of just completely anonymous — I don’t know if you read the Starr Report. The rest of us were glued to it. I have many passages memorized.
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