Drop-Dead Gorgeous

 

There’s some instructive irony in the fact that Sarah Palin is drop-dead gorgeous. The irony is that she would have many of us just drop dead. Intellectuals, scientists, academics, journalists, and atheists for a start. And anyone else who would cross her, challenge her, probably even just ask her a question.

The irony exists only because we are such supplicants to appearances, especially men to good-looking women. Remember in "The Maltese Falcon" when Bogie explained how his partner could only have been shot by letting a good-looking woman – bloody Mary Astor – get close enough to him without his drawing his gun.

Perhaps it is why we find such fascination in pretty celebrities getting into trouble. Consider Paris, Britney, and Anna Nicole who were marketing figures who garnered oceans of ink and years of broadcast time for shear vapidity...covered by good looks

Oh sure, women swoon for sexy men; for remarkably unhandsome men, too, those with power, like Henry Kissinger.

But back to the governor. Here is a woman who has garnered zillions of adherents, mindless in their appreciation of her, unswayed by what she represents. Sakes alive, the girl believes the Earth began only 6,000 years ago. She thinks it was her god’s idea that we should invade Iraq. And she is ready to condemn her own daughter to a marriage with hockey trash.

How is that we are so easily swayed by a pretty face? Why doesn’t it matter that her thinking is from a century or two ago? What does it say about our culture that we would even consider that she might fill the shoes of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt?

It’s shocking when you think about it. And perhaps this time we might climb down from that shock and parse how we are making decisions about our leaders.

Hey guys, rethink the meaning of "If looks could kill." Please.

 

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