but hugo’s right if said compliment is meant to praise a man’s “fishing” skills. that’s bad, very bad. naughty sexists!

But as for the Kucinich thing, I do think it adds to his cachet in the eyes of some, but that doesn’t mean he chose Elizabeth for that reason. And it’s an old and tired thing that shows up sometimes on the left, this habit of suggesting that the right politics can get you laid by hot chicks. The ugliest of all anti-draft slogans in the ’60s was, of course, the vile “girls say yes to guys who say no.”

I think your recognition of what is going on here is very sharp…I’m not sure what I would say, if I were a man, if it were me and my wife were standing there. It would make me feel quite awkward.

What I am curious about is whether, perhaps consciously, you were inspired to write on this topic by the comment I posted earlier in reply to your post on Dennis Kucinich. Namely, that while a lot of the admiration for him as a presidential candidate seems to stem from his stance on various issues, it has been considerably enhanced, as has his whole status for that matter, by the fact that he is now married to a woman most people find not only pretty, but strikingly beautiful, i.e., drop-dead gorgeous. And they are at least as impressed by his ability to have won this woman, who is both more conventionally attractive than he is and considerably younger, for his wife as they are by anything that comes out of his mouth. Suddenly, it’s as if each of his opinions and ideas is further gilded by the fact that it is the opinion or idea of a man who was able to win for himself this caliber of woman…

Although in the case of Elizabeth Kucinich an argument can be made for the woman being intelligent and accomplished in her own right, this appears to be but icing on the cake for some Dennis Kucinich admirers. Chances are he’d be able to bask in her reflected glow even if she were a high school graduate who worked as a bagger at the local supermarket. The currency of youth and beauty still trumps the currency of intelligence and achievement…but when you consider that Elizabeth Kucinich combines them all, you’re talking about Dennis benefiting from some very serious positive “arm-candy effect.”

Can that effect boost him all the way to the White House? Maybe not. But it has succeeded in making him a highly popular “progressive thinking-man’s candidate” (with the emphasis on “man” in this case)…and I can’t help but feel that part of this is because men look at him and see a message: “Guys, you can be as short and homely and aging as all get-out, but if you have the right ideals and the right ideas, you can STILL have a hot woman on your arm. Just look at me.”

I’m not meaning to pick on Mr. and Mrs. K. to the exclusion of everyone else who might be used as an example. It’s just that I see men who are progressive thinkers in every other aspect of their lives still buying into the envy of other men’s “arm candy,” and acquiring or wishing to acquire “arm candy” for themselves, and sometimes it’s enough to make me despair that we’ve only come as far as this.

Yes, and all this is why there are no people who are considered unattractive in the world. We’ve selected them out over millions of years. Right. And of course, everyone knows that people who are deemed as unattractive never, ever get married or have children. Ever! And this is why things that are negatively linked with fertility, like having zero body fat and tiny hips, are attractive to some men.

Yes.

Of course, you want to know my reaction now, right? I said, “yeah, we picked that suit and the tie out together.”

But I do like the “I think so, too” suggestion of earlier in this comment thread.

I apologize. I did not realize that my comments were off topic and that I was acting the troll. My purpose of the second part of my post was to help explain the reasoning of my comment in the first part of my post.

If you don’t want me to comment on your blog anymore, let me know and I will follow your wishes.

- Fred

You don’t have to give a lecture — but saying “I would say thank you, but I had nothing to do with it” with a chuckle gets the point across in a socially acceptable way.