He’s Dreamy!
Thanks (I think) to a commenter, I see that everyone’s favorite neoconfederate is declaring that “the “gender gap” will evaporate instantly now that Paul Ryan’s on the ticket. Trust me on this — chicks dig him.” Sure. Fortunately, this has already been pre-refuted by Belle Waring, so I don’t think I have to bother. (Did Republicans think that women would swoon over Fred Thompson? Sadly, yes.) Politico has more on this important trend.
Granted, fantasizing that the ladies will swoon over Ryan because of his eyes while ignoring his appalling record on women’s rights issues is still more serious than swooning over Ryan because of his wholly unearned reputation for wonkery.
Reminds me of that time Sarah Palin won over all of Hillary Clinton’s supporters because both Hillary and Palin have ladyparts.
Don’t kid yourself, PUMAs will like Ryan even more! I’ll try to verify that by visiting the phone booth where they’re all meeting.
I’ll try to verify that by visiting the phone booth where they’re all meeting.
Ahem.
And, actually, the meeting will be at a hotel in exurban DC instead. I regret the error.
I’m a gay man who is Facebook friends with a lot of gay men, including several PUMAs. My Facebook feed does not suggest any resurgence of the PUMAs – Obama’s support for gay marriage seems to have silenced them. Notably, a small number of my gay friends have made the point that Paul Ryan looks hot, but evidently they remain turned off by his complete loathing of gays.
jug ears are the new hotness
get a grip!
I take it back: the Bully Pulpit can have important and beneficial effects on our politics after all.
I know a good place where they can have their conference.
Oh no! It’s been struck the fuck down!
I think you meant to spell wonkery with an a.
No, if he had a reputation for wankery that would be completely justified.
Patrick Dempsey, watch out!
Yeah. Ryan’s gonna gut your Medicare!
I think some people are projecting about what makes women swoon.
you mean it’s not
I want love, I want drugs, I want sex and affection
I want everyone in this room here to look in my direction
I want a man with lips just like Mitt Romney
Eddie Munster’s hair and John Boehner’s stagger
A man inside a room is shaking hands with other men
This is how it happens
Our carefully laid plans
Shake it, shake it baby
Shake your ass out in that street
You’re gonna make us scream someday
You’re gonna make it big
You love so deep, so tender
Your people and your land
You love ‘em ’til they can’t recall
Who they are again
Work it, work it baby
Work your way ’round that room
You’re gonna make it big one day
You’re gonna make a boom
But I am
But I am
But I am not a number, not a name
But I am
But I am
But I am a carefully laid plan
Shake what your mama gave you
You know that it won’t last
You’re gonna taste the ground real soon
You’re gonna taste the grass
A man inside a room is shaking hands with other men
This is how it happens
Our world under command
Shake it, shake it baby
Shake your ass out in that street
You’re gonna make us scream someday
You’re gonna make us weak
You’re gonna make us scream someday
You’re gonna make it big
It’s like 1988 all over again.
This. Also (though they weren’t about the pulchritude of the male running mate) 2000 (Gore isn’t a real, manly man), 2004 (Kerry is a windsurfing ninny), and even 2008 if you can believe it (you can smell the Aqua Velva on McCain).
Not quite like 1988. In 1988 the Republicans weren’t yet stupid enough to promote Quayle as some great policy wonk, although perhaps it’s only that the press wasn’t yet subservient enough to go along with such a ridiculous assertion. Ryan as policy wonk is every bit as ridiculous an assertion.
…in comparison to the rest of the Republican party.
Ryan is not a wonk, comparatively or otherwise. Pretending to understand something and totally failing to do so while loudly proclaiming your own brilliance is even less wonky that simply not bothering with pretense.
Sarah Palin has as good a grasp on policy as does Ryan, if not a better grasp.
Pretending to understand something and totally failing to do so while loudly proclaiming your own brilliance is
even less wonky that simply not bothering with pretensepretty much exactly what we should expect from someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously.FTFY.
Take note, economists!
Hey hey hey – some of us *do* understand what we’re talking about. We’re the ones who are not afraid to admit that there are things we cannot explain using conventional models, or that people are not coldly rational utility-maximizers, or indeed that most of the assumptions that underline what passes for economic thought are only useful as thought exercises, or as starting points for understanding the complexity of the economy and of human behavior within it.
We have our meetings in the same phone booth as the PUMAs. Not at the same time, though.
We’re the ones who are not afraid to admit that there are things we cannot explain using conventional models, or that people are not coldly rational utility-maximizers, or indeed that most of the assumptions that underline what passes for economic thought are only useful as thought exercises, or as starting points for understanding the complexity of the economy and of human behavior within it.
Yeah, those people exist. They’re called political scientists.
It’s nice to see your admission of the limits of your field. But is that a common sentiment among working economists? From my admittedly pedestrian perspective, most economists in the papers, blogs, tv etc., show no such humility. Is that just because the people I read/see are in the popular media realm, or does the same never-admit-to-any-uncertainty tendency (bordering on arrogance) permeate the field even among the people outside of the limelight? Just curious.
Again, I fail to understand the basis for statements like this. Ryan’s reputation as a serious wonk is obviously ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous because his budget is dishonest, not because he’s an idiot.
Sarah Palin couldn’t name a newspaper! She couldn’t coherently answer a question on any area of national politics. Paul Ryan is a fairly intelligent man who has horrible opinions on politics. That’s not particularly impressive – most politicians are fairly intelligent, and certainly most VP candidates have been. It’s about the bare minimum you should ask for. But I don’t see what is gained by pretending that he’s an idiot. He’s obviously not.
it’s ridiculous because his budget is dishonest, not because he’s an idiot.
Serious question – given all the wrong math, how can you tell the difference?
Analogies to this particular Reaganesque aspect of Ryan’s are left to the reader.
I must once again paraphrase Krugzilla: Ryan is a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.
Ryan is a Randroid’s idea of a wonk.
Even if you view Ryan’s Roadmap as primarily dishonest rather than idiotic, it would still have to be considered singularly incompetent in its dishonesty. A stone is a better liar than Ryan. Ryan can’t possibly understand his Roadmap because if he understood it he’d have come up with better lies.
If Ryan’s a liar he’s the most stupid and lazy liar in American politics.
Examples of Ryan being an idiot? The idea that Palin and Perry are idiots are based on them, well, looking like fools on television. What is the comparable evidence for Ryan?
I still don’t see that being wrong or stupid precludes the label of wonk. After all, here we are.
An inability to do basic math. The belief that Ayn Rand is a serious thinker.
Ryan’s roadmap is conclusive proof that he’s stupid, as is his Ayn Rand fetish.
Doing and saying actually stupid incoherent things is more stupid than fumbling language badly. Ryan offers a better presentation on a surface nonsubstantive analysis than Perry and Palin do, but any substantive analysis of what he proposes can only lead to the conclusion that he’s a few functioning synapses short of totally daft. He’s may be looking good, confident, and well spoken while running around proclaiming that two plus two equals negative eleventeen, but he’s still running around proclaiming that two plus two equals negative eleventeen.
Can you point to anything substantive Ryan has ever said that isn’t either trivial or trivially refuted?
Alan Greenspan not only has an Ayn Rand fetish, he was actually a member of the Ayn Rand cult. And, despite that, is obviously a very intelligent man.
A person can both be intelligent and believe idiotic things. Surely this should not be a surprise?
Smart people don’t say this:
People who gain a positive reputation because they put out two of the three fires they set, however, might.
This is getting ridiculous. Is your basic argument here that all Republicans are stupid? That it is impossible to disagree with you politically without being of low intelligence?
Republicans/movement conservatives are wrong. They shouldn’t be running the country. Their general ideas about running the country are terrible. I don’t think it goes too far to say that, for the most part, they are under the spell of an ideology that is something close to sociopathic.
But while many of them are quite stupid, there are plenty who are perfectly intelligent. Alan Greenspan was wrong, and probably disingenuous, in that congressional testimony. But he’s obviously also a man of above average intelligence.
All I can gather here is a tautology whereby Greenspan and Ryan are stupid because they’re Republicans, and Republicans because they are stupid. I don’t think these two things have all that much to do with each other. Very intelligent people are perfectly capable of believing very wrong things.
He’s obviously not so smart, and if, back in the 1980s and going forward you’d worked from the assumption that anyone with an Ayn Rand fetish can’t possibly understand the basics of economics you’d have done a much better job predicting the course of Alan Greenspan’s tenure than did anyone who hailed him as some sort of guru.
Alan Greenspan is a useless fool and a Republican hack, and that’s something that’s been obvious since long before the housing bubble burst. For example, anyone whose view of federal budget deficits changes not with economic conditions roughly in accord with classical Keynesian theory but rather with the letter after the President’s name is not and never will be an economist.
Alan Greenspan effectively denied, contrary to all empirical evidence and as a matter of religious conviction, that it was possible for economic bubbles to exist. Then he denied that there was anything useful government could do about them. And he cycled through these denials more than enough times to justifiably invoke the old saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” against both him and anyone silly enough to defend his intellect.
What R Johnson said above: “Ryan can’t possibly understand his Roadmap because if he understood it he’d have come up with better lies.” If you define “wonk” as someone who’s really interested in the details of his subject– someone who’s really interested in the details of budgetary reform wouldn’t write Ryan’s alleged budget, because it leaves out every detail.
So either he’s too dumb to be a wonk, or he’s just a faker. But I agree with R that a smart faker could come up with better-quality bullshit, rather than doing the equivalent of turning in a 20-page term paper where the first 19 pages each contain one letter in a 700-point font, and the last page says “In conclusion, this is a very important subject.” That’s fine for the hardcore base, but if he’s trying to convince anyone who might actually read the thing, it’s inept.
Your basic conception here is that all conservatives are stupid. This is unwise. Being wrong, even wildly and disastrously wrong, about major questions of public policy doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
There’s a difference between saying that Alan Greenspan is not the wise economic guru everyone hailed him as in the 90s and saying that he is stupid in the same manner as Sarah Palin and Rick Perry.
Is John Roberts stupid too?
Respectfully, I disagree. Ryan is clearly a good liar, when you think about his target audience: the mainstream media. Just look at the various headlines. His budget has snookered most reporters and pundits. His lies are obvious to liberals, numbers crunchers, and critical thinkers, but he’s not trying to fool us – trying to fool us would require making statements that would undermine his slick sell to the rubes.
As for stupid, he’s stupid in Arendt’s Banality of Evil form of stupid.* He’s able to intelligently make all sorts of practical, tactical decisions without thinking critically about his beliefs. He’s also intelligent enough to learn exactly as much as he needs to know to further his ideology, without learning anything more. He’s able to hold two completely incompatible ideas in his mind simultaneously. He also engages in no introspection whatsoever.
In contrast, Palin and Perry really are just stupid and lazy. They aren’t capable of learning as much as they need to know to further their ideology, and they aren’t smart enough to make tactically smart practical decisions. Moreover, in the end, they couldn’t fool the mainstream media’s reporters and pundits.
*Of course, I’m not suggesting that Ryan’s evil is even near the same sphere of Eichmann’s evil. But, the book’s idea of the intermixing of stupidity and evil provides a universally applicable insight into the human condition.
If you have intelligence and choose to apply it in only a limited area, that makes you wilfully stupid in all other departments. Or crazy. Pick one. I don’t really care which.
Well, smart people can be very stupid when it comes to their blind spots. But that kind of stupidity is not the same thing as Sarah Palin or Rick Palin’s brand of stupidity.
Palin and Perry obviously just aren’t smart. They are unintelligent people. They have a tough time with complex concepts. They take in information slowly. They have reached middle age without really taking much of any opportunity to reduce their ignorance. They don’t think quickly on their feet, and have trouble articulating their thoughts.
There may be senses in which you can describe someone like Paul Ryan as stupid, but it’s certainly not in the sense that Rick Perry and Sarah Palin (or most of the mouth-breathers in the Republican House caucus) are stupid.
I’m down with the Ryan-hate but this is wrong. Intelligence is not a singular concept applied to different situations and is still subject to all the vagaries and irrationality of the mind’s cognitive mechanisms fighting each other. If this is your standard everyone is willfully stupid or crazy.
(I happen to think that – everyone is crazy in some ways, thinking meat that we are – but I don’t think that’s what you mean)
In order to say someone’s being intellectually dishonest, or crazy, you need some circumstance like someone not performing a specific intellectual task they’ve shown they can do. If SEK tries to claim Bill Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father because they both use nautical metaphors, sure, dishonest/crazy. When one of those Regency hacks tried to do it . . . not so much.
I still remember the Doonsebury cartoon where the focus group is filled with women sounding an awful lot like vacuumslayer, with the final panel reading “Unfortunately, the Bush advisors did not recognize sarcasm.”
Full many a link is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air
Some mute inglorious Trudeau here may rest,
Some Quayle, guiltless of misspelling potato?
This concludes LG&M’s first Thomas Gray night. Tune in again in, oh, fifteen years or so.
Seems like only yesterday that they were saying the same thing about Dan Quayle.
(And for anyone too young to remember: I’m dead serious.)
Oops, Hogan beat me to it.
I keep seeing right wing guys swooning over how sexy he is and then suggesting that women must agree. I think they’re just a bunch of closet cases.
Hey, scroll down on the main page for hot hot Liddy on W action. Actually, don’t.
She was cheating on Bob? But he’s a wounded vet!
I vividly remember Chris Matthews swooning over Fred Thompson. It wasn’t very subtle.
Matthews’ boner for W in his flight suit was practically visible on the teevee.
Ah, memories! Was it really so long ago that Robert Stacy McCain had this to say about Emmett Till?
Once having said this, he should have retreated forever to a Trappist monastery. Instead, though I doubt he can ever quite sink to that level again, he keeps trying, by God he keeps trying. Complete worthlessness of expression may once again be within his reach!
On what basis would the Trappists have him?
Seriously, why are you hating on the makers of really good beer?
Well, I assume they’re good Christians, and good Christians are into forgiving even the most depraved of sinners.
Of course they’d want evidence of contrition, so–yeah, he’d never get in.
They wouldn’t. But he seems a good candidate for the Pralite monks. FSM knows he desperately needs some mental control techniques and then be locked in a small metal box for the rest of his life.
“needs to learn.” Edit fail. Argh.
OK, waaaayyyyyyyyy off topic (except around here; baseball is never totally OT):
One of the people who made Red Sox nation a nice place, even in the worst of times, has passed to that great Iowa cornfield baseball diamond in the sky. He was the real deal, and a much better person than a baseball player.
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/2012/08/13/red-sox-legend-johnny-pesky-dies/4FIyv55aZMCrkTUhkQTsTO/story.html
The picture of Red Sox 2004:
I dunno, there are a lot of women inexplicably reading “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Maybe the Republicans are banking on the political equivalent.
With Republicans there’s no safe word.
“TAX HIKE, WILLARD – TAX HIKE!”
Hint: Amazon doesn’t verify your age before you download
pornliterary erotica to the Kindle your parents got you for your school work.Nothing inexplicable about it: it’s kinky fantasy written in a faux-naive style so as to be non-threatening to the mildly kink-curious who’ve never looked at such things.
Ryan on the other hand is something I’d venture to say most women, and most men, have had some personal experience with: the plastic-haired young boss with the permanent cocaine grin who thinks he’s God’s gift, was promoted for no apparent reason, and wants everyone to read his favorite book so they’ll understand why they’re lucky to be lectured/groped/fired. I refuse to believe that anyone looks at that and honestly thinks it’s attractive or exciting.
Its quite telling that they so are willing to openly condescend to 51% of the population.
It should probably also be noted that there have been some references to Romney’s alleged good looks, also. No links, sorry.
He’s got shoulders you could land a 737 on!
Sadly, that’s not an Althouse quote. But it could have been! (Actually, why isn’t she writing for Politico?)
I don’t care how much you hint, I’m not writing Romney/Simon slashfic for you.
If I want some bloodsucker to make me swoon, I’ll watch “True Blood.”
The politics of that show are pretty muddled, but Rev. Steve Newlin is doing a perfect impression of a fresh-faced young Republican star. And even though the vampires are putting him forward as their main PR guy, no one actually likes him or finds him attractive at all, except for a haggard psychopath who doesn’t really care about politics but just wants to suck the world dry. Hmmmmm.
Washington is known as Hollywood for ugly people. But hotness hegemony might be migrating over.
Last time, 2 of the 4 on the 2 tickets could pass muster. Now its 3. And Joey’s trying, for what its worth. Hairplugs.
Before Obama, we were left with the overrated and puffy-faced-from-too-many-drugs Kennedy. He was followed by 3 fugly’s in a row…not counting steely jawed Ford since he snuck in there. So the metrosexual Reagan probably kicked things off. The next two guys weren’t awful and tried to keep in shape.
Then Obama came along and ratcheted the whole thing up. There is definitely a pattern here. Is an LBJ/Nixon even possible any more? Gaddafi, circa 1969…not the more recent Keith Richards version, could’ve probably won the 2012 republican nom at this point. Obama is his enemy, he’s killed a lot of muslims, and I assume he’s opposed to SSM.
No wonder Cheney isn’t even trying.
Swooning over Ryan is cause to consult a neurologists at the first opportunity, as something is seriously wrong with your brain.
And here I thought Lloyd Bentsen was the hottest VP nominee ever.
“ryan as policy wonk” is funnier than “cpinva as playgirl centerfold”, with less substance. ryan’s a fraud, who’s basic math skills lie mouldering in a gutter. i could run circles around him, without breaking a sweat. well hell, anyone who took math, beyond algebra I can.
everytime i hear or read someone call ryan this great republican intellectual, i start to gag. it simply shows what little is required, from a republican, to be considered an intellectual: he can, on occasion, speak in complete sentences. well, that’s more than palin can do.