Althouse: Bidenism of the Day.

July 23, 2009

Bidenism of the Day.

"I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn't say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That's my observation."

53 comments:

The Dude said...: Assassination insurance.; 7/23/09, 10:52 AM
John Richardson said...: I wonder what Jill has to say about that.

I agree with NKVD about Biden being assassination insurance.; 7/23/09, 10:54 AM
Fred4Pres said...: I hate him being vice president, but I like Joe Biden. He is dishonest on many levels, but just blurts out whatever he is thinking. It is refreshing and scary at the same time.

Truth is Ukranian woman are very attractive. So are many central European woman.; 7/23/09, 10:57 AM
Bissage said...: In a world ruled by a just and all-powerful God, Vice-President Biden would be on TV hosting “Family Feud.”; 7/23/09, 10:58 AM
Gahrie said...: I always saw Biden more as a used car salesman in a small mid-western town.; 7/23/09, 11:00 AM
traditionalguy said...: Biden is striking a chord that is Pure Bidenesque. First he acknowledges a truth, but then carries on as if it was only an irrelevant joke. He is correct of course. That area of the world was ruled for 400 years by Genghis Khan's Mongolian guys who insisted on becoming ancestors of a beautiful people. The look is similar to an Amerasian look that can be both stunningly beautiful and very intelligent.; 7/23/09, 11:11 AM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: "I've been around this great big world and I've seen all kinds of girls. But I couldn't wait to get back to the States, back to the cutest girls in the world."

Guess the Beach Boys never went to Ukraine? American women are potted plants - well, I've been knowing that.; 7/23/09, 11:17 AM
MadisonMan said...: Never use 33 words to say 4 words.

Ukrainian Women are HOTTT!; 7/23/09, 11:24 AM
Bissage said...: Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out.
They leave the West behind.
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout.
That Georgia's always on my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my mind.; 7/23/09, 11:24 AM
Bissage said...: For Laura.; 7/23/09, 11:26 AM
John said...: Biden is a buffoon. But he at least seems likable on a personal level He has no business being VP, but I would imagine he would make a decent dinner guest.

In that way, I will take Biden over Obama. Obama the man, versus Obama the myth, seems like a complete prick on every level. I watch him in his interviews and news conferences and am can't find one charming or pleasent trait about him. He never seems to smile or relax. He is always scowling. All the world's problems are the result of the machinations of his enemies. He is very Nixon like but even worse. Nixon had all of the same characteristics. But despite this, I always got the feeling from Nixon that at heart he was a man who felt like an outsider and desparately wanted to be liked and accepted. He was forever the smart awkward kid trying to fit in. This made Nixon even at his worst a somewhat sympathetic figure. I get none of that from Obama. He doesn't seem to have any interest in being liked or accepted. He knows he is liked and accepted. His ego seems to know no bounds. He is really starting to creep me out.; 7/23/09, 11:36 AM
former law student said...: That Biden. He's a charmer. Too bad for him his wife's not a Ukie.

WP says his wife's dad was Sicilian, but does not give his MIL's ethnicity.; 7/23/09, 11:51 AM
Triangle Man said...: Bisage @ 10:58. Perfect.; 7/23/09, 11:52 AM
TWM said...: My take on Biden is that he is brain-damaged.; 7/23/09, 11:52 AM
John Althouse Cohen said...: Biden loves making folksy remarks on women's attractiveness. In one of the primary debates, every candidate was asked to name their favorite thing about the candidate standing to their left. Biden had to say his favorite thing about Dennis Kucinich. He said: "His wife."

Also: "My wife, Jill, who you’ll meet soon, who’s drop-dead gorgeous. My wife, Jill, she also has a doctorate degree, which is a problem."; 7/23/09, 11:53 AM
The Dude said...: Right, because if a liberal says it, it's "folksy", if a non-liberal says it, it's creepy. We see you workin' there.; 7/23/09, 11:59 AM
bagoh20 said...: Biden comments like this make me like him. I see nothing wrong with it and find it refreshingly honest and even charming. Sorry.; 7/23/09, 12:01 PM
wuzzagrunt said...: Joe Biden is one heartbeat away from being the dumbest president in US history.; 7/23/09, 12:11 PM
Alex said...: Jill Biden - drop dead gorgeous? Maybe in another life! Fugly is you ask me.; 7/23/09, 12:18 PM
former law student said...: Fugly is you ask me.

When was the last time you saw her?

By the time you get to be 58, your "drop-dead gorgeous" years are behind you. Dr. Biden looks very good for her age.; 7/23/09, 12:23 PM
Wince said...: One attractive trait of women in that part of the world is that they don't carry around the western feminist baggage that says a woman should recoil whenever their beauty is appreciated.

The basis of women's equality in the former Soviet bloc proceeded on a much less academic, grievance-based plane than here.

Love him or hate him, all of which would seem to support Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truth of Life No. 24, written back in 1987:

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."; 7/23/09, 12:26 PM
John Althouse Cohen said...: Right, because if a liberal says it, it's "folksy", if a non-liberal says it, it's creepy. We see you workin' there.

Commenters are certainly creative in making up views and attributing them to me.; 7/23/09, 12:42 PM
ricpic said...: I slaver for slavs.; 7/23/09, 12:52 PM
BJM said...: Biden is an old school lecher, the guy with an oily smile and a glad hand who moves into your personal space uninvited. Ick.; 7/23/09, 12:52 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."

You are damn tooting it was. Because before feminism, a woman's value was measured first by how sexually appealing she was, then by her effectiveness in the workplace or wherever. Remember Christine Craft, fired from her anchor job for being "too old, unattractive, and not deferential to the men"? Yay for feminism. Still doesn't stop you all from making ugly gratuitous inaccurate and totally irrelevant insults about Michelle Obama's body.; 7/23/09, 12:59 PM
Duncan Cookson said...: Hey, at least this time the clown is vice-president, that's progress...; 7/23/09, 1:30 PM
XWL said...: Maybe Biden was hoping they'd throw him a parade; 7/23/09, 1:38 PM
Geoff Matthews said...: I grew up in Alberta, where there is a substantial Ukranian population (ethnic Ukraines, not individuals born in Ukraine). We would tell jokes about them, like "How do you sink a Canadian battleship? Have a Ukraine build it.", "How do you get out of a Ukrainian submarine? Through the screen door.", and "Why does Saskatchewan have rats and Alberta have Ukrainians? Saskatchewan had first choice."

These are immature jokes, but as I couldn't distinguish a Ukrainian from a non-Ukrainian (and in fact, I told these jokes to friends who later learned they were Ukrainian after repeating them to their parents, a fact I find much more ammusing now), I try not to be too hard on my 10-year-old self.

BTW, any truth the notion that Eastern European women are supposedly more attractive because of all the men who died during WWI and WWII (the surviving men married and had kids with only the more attractive women)?; 7/23/09, 1:43 PM
Cedarford said...: wuzzagrunt said...
Joe Biden is one heartbeat away from being the dumbest president in US history.

That might be true. Though to be President you still have to be well above standard intelligence of the American population. But true if it is about doing a lot of dumb things.

The 6 that historians rate as the "smartest" Presidents, in terms of IQ, themselves did some dumb things.

In order: Thomas Jefferson, Richard Nixon, James Garfield, Bill Clinton, Herbert Hoover, James Madison.

=============; 7/23/09, 2:30 PM
ricpic said...: Yay for feminism. Still doesn't stop you all from making ugly gratuitous innacurate and totally irrelevant insults about Michelle Obama's body.

Yes, we're still free to speak the truth despite feminism.

Michelle's ass BLOTS OUT THE SUN!; 7/23/09, 2:31 PM
BJM said...: Laura, isn't the fawning over Michelle Obama's appearance really sexist lookism? Enough about about her kitten heels, it's degrading.

I'm a woman, and I too think Michelle Obama has a big ass. She holds her jaw in a pugnacious manner that is not attractive in the least, needs a makeup do over (drawn in eyebrows? really?), has an awkward gait and a scowl that could peel paint.

However, I also thought Laura Bush was mousy and dowdy and don't get me started on Madam Secretary Cankles. So what?

Thus far Michelle Obama and the WH has presented a very superficial image as First Lady. I find her Mrs. Obama-in-a-floral-frock pose quite tedious and disengenious if we are to believe her pre-election CV.

Perhaps Michelle should discard the twin-sets and put forward her agenda/causes and we wouldn't be discussing the size of her ass, but that of her intellect and accomplisments on our behalf.; 7/23/09, 2:48 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: I'm a woman, and I too think Michelle Obama has a big ass.

While you, no doubt, are a beauty queen. And women need to be judged harshly if they don't meet your standards of beauty, b/c if they don't that's a personal failing on their part. I guess Michelle is supposed to undergo liposuction so you can approve of her butt. Hold your breath.

What accomplishments is Michelle supposed to have? She's married to the president. Period. She can have whatever kind of butt God chose to bless her with, for all of me. And if I look critically at her, she looks proportional to me anyway.

A real woman has a butt, folks.

I detest the political views that the Obamas have expressed, but that has as much to do with Michelle Obama's figure as it does the price of tea on Mars.; 7/23/09, 2:59 PM
wuzzagrunt said...: Cedarford said...

...to be President you still have to be well above standard intelligence of the American population.

The only thing you have to be is a natural born citizen above the age of 35 years (or claim to be).; 7/23/09, 3:01 PM
blake said...: And women need to be judged harshly if they don't meet your standards of beauty, b/c if they don't that's a personal failing on their part. I guess Michelle is supposed to undergo liposuction so you can approve of her butt.

I don't see anyone suggesting it's a "failing". It's a flaw, in their view, but so what? Is it irrelevant or isn't it? If it is, why push back at it so hard?

Are we not allowed to express aesthetic preferences without it being viewed as an attack?

Using your protected status as the black wife of a black senator to get a massive raise and hurt the people you supposedly represent is a failing.; 7/23/09, 4:44 PM
BJM said...: Laura,

To quote Obama "this is not about me".

I don't expect Michelle Obama to look any other way than she chooses. Given Michelle's resources, I don't think her clothing flatters her short-waisted body type and her eye makeup is too harsh. There is nothing demeaning to womankind in saying what is apparent before our eyes; girl's got no taste.

Michelle Obama is not simply Mrs. Obama, First Lady is a corporate wife on steroids and Michelle Obama is playing a Donna Reed role that she and her husband decided fits their agenda/ ambitions. As a woman, I find that much more degrading than dissing the size of her ass.

btw-I detest our culture's obsession with age, weight and beauty, and as you say not all women are thin, however there's a great deal of different between bootyliciousness and a big ass.; 7/23/09, 5:08 PM
The Dude said...: Whatever you do, never, and I mean never, insult Michelle O's manhood. That woman will hurt you.; 7/23/09, 5:15 PM
ddh said...: As Instapundit has said, they told me that if I voted for McCain, we'd have an idiot for Vice President--and they were right!; 7/23/09, 5:44 PM
rhhardin said...: Guys bring up attractiveness because that's what interests them.

There is also some shared irony concerning feminism's "qualified women" that you run into in this or that job.

Everybody is much better off doing a job that actually interests them.

Wm. Kerrigan: We are men and women. It almost always matters which we are. Men and women are aggressive. Their regard for each other is clouded by grudges, suspicions, fears, needs, desires, and narcississtic postures. There's no scrubbing them out. The best you can hope for is domestication, as in football, rock, humor, happy marriage, and a good prose style. Jokes trade on offensiveness; PC is not a funny dialect. The unconscious is a joker, a sexist and aggressive creature. Our sexuality has always been scandalous.

_Raritan_ XI:3 p103; 7/23/09, 6:27 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: Using your protected status as the black wife of a black senator to get a massive raise and hurt the people you supposedly represent is a failing.

Then talk about that. You people talk about Michelle's butt like (a) it's a huge deformity and not a normal variation on the body of a mature woman who doesn't have an eating disorder, (b) she picked it out of a catalog and has that exact butt on purpose, (c) she has solicited your comments about it, and (d) it is the only thing about her that matters.

You say "Are we not allowed to express aesthetic preferences without it being viewed as an attack?" but you aren't expressing aesthetic preferences, you are making ridiculously hyperbolic statements about Michelle Obama's body and its lack of conformity to your particular tastes in order to be ugly. Well, it's a free country, but don't lie to yourself that you are being anything but immature and churlish.; 7/23/09, 6:41 PM
blake said...: Careful with that "you", Laura.

I've never once commented on her butt, here or anywhere else. However, I think the ridiculous reaction of the press, fawning over her purported beauty and arms (arms? wtf?) is going to lead to this kind of backlash. In other words, she may not have solicited anyone else's opinions, but the press has for her. Also, the press treats her like that's all that matters.

It's unrealistic to expect people to just take, without comment, the hyperbolic praise heaped upon her. Even if I personally don't care for the butt humor, I get it.

I'm more fond of the Klingon jokes, really.; 7/23/09, 7:23 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: I think the press talking nonstop about her appearance is pretty silly, too. Usually you can tell when an article is going to be like that, and you can not read it. Not seeing the connection between that stuff and having to make ugly comments about her. I especially doubt that some of the men here who talk trash about her appearance read those things, anyway.; 7/23/09, 7:55 PM
blake said...: I don't know. I'm not really comfortable generalizing. I know "fat ass" is kind of like "gay", in that a lot of people use it as derogatory term without any particular meaning.

However, I was reading over at Ace of Spades, and he makes the (legitimate) comment that the hyperbole about the First Lady really does end up reflecting badly back at her.

His point is that the current First Lady, much like the previous First Lady, is okay looking. But (unlike the previous First Lady) putting her in as one of the most beautiful women in the world (Maxim) or suggesting that a woman who has been "professionally" beautiful (Carla Bruni) doesn't want to be shown up by her?

I mean, come on.; 7/23/09, 8:10 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: Blake, did Michelle do that? Or did journalists trying to get read, and magazines/newspapers trying to sell advertising?

And if Vanity Fair or somebody wants to do a shoot, and put her on the cover, is she supposed to say no?; 7/23/09, 8:20 PM
blake said...: A little modesty might go a long way, Laura, yeah. Turn down that Vanity Fair shoot; demur about some of the more hyperbolic gushing; draw the line somewhere about how many magazine covers you'll be on.

The taunting going on here is about the same level as the effusive praise going on elsewhere. I doubt, seriously, that ricpic believes Michelle's ass actually blots out the sun.

Ricpic is also a regular at Trooper York's; we're all pretty friendly to normal and plus-size women over there. We celebrate women of all shapes and sizes.; 7/23/09, 8:46 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: "Turn down that Vanity Fair shoot"

Why should Michelle do that? Nobody else does. Other women get in the limelight for more or less random reasons and they tend to milk it while they can. It's her turn. I don't look at the mags, myself, but I can't blame the woman for enjoying the attention.

"I doubt, seriously, that ricpic believes Michelle's ass actually blots out the sun."

Sure. So why did he say it?; 7/23/09, 8:59 PM
blake said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/24/09, 1:10 AM
blake said...: Why should Michelle do that? Nobody else does.

Really? Nobody else in the world has ever turned down media attention?

Other women get in the limelight for more or less random reasons and they tend to milk it while they can. It's her turn. I don't look at the mags, myself, but I can't blame the woman for enjoying the attention.

And you know what? They get judged on their appearance, just like she is. Just like former First Ladies who didn't even get the benefit of a flattering photos and gushing text.

Sure. So why did he say it?

You may want to familiarize yourself with the use of hyperbole in humor. It's used a lot on this planet. Key hint: If something is literally impossible, hyperbole for the sake of humor may be at work.; 7/24/09, 1:10 AM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: I guess it would help if it was funny.; 7/24/09, 7:15 AM
blake said...: Do you subject all humor you don't find funny to this kind of analysis, or is this just a hot button issue for you?; 7/24/09, 12:07 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: It's a hot button issue for me.

Not because I have a big butt, myself. Because I'm tired of women being reduced to some body part, that body part being freely critiqued, like the Brazilian girl Obama was photographed with.

There's plenty of humor I don't get, and I don't have to get it.

C.S. Lewis said there are two kinds of dirty jokes: there are the jokes you tell because they're funny, and the ones you tell because they're an excuse to be vulgar. I think the comments about Michelle's butt aren't made to be funny, they're an excuse to be disrespectful to a woman as a woman, without reference to whatever objectionable thing she might actually have said or done. As a woman, I don't like it. As a man, you don't have to get that, just as I don't get the humor in butt jokes.; 7/24/09, 1:47 PM
blake said...: Oh, of course: Jokes that involve public figures are never about the humor. David Letterman has been telling the same fat jokes for his entire TV career, just substituting the woman of the day (Oprah, Roseann Barr, Rose O' Donnell). And the same slut jokes, too. (Joan Collins in the '70s, Bristol Palin today.)

I've been a Sysop in a comedy forum for, geez, goin' on 15 years now, and I've seen the same political jokes told literally a hundred times, just substituting one politician for another. It's not really ever about humor.

On the other hand, I smirked a little at ricpic's remark just because of the degree of hyperbole.

And I wouldn't regard it as a dirty joke, really.; 7/24/09, 2:17 PM
blake said...: I will add, though, that the attention on the Brazilian girl was truly awful.

I don't think the photographer should've released the picture at all.; 7/24/09, 2:21 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: No, I wouldn't characterize the butt comments as dirty jokes, either. They don't really rise to that level.

Letterman wouldn't know an original thought if it walked up and slapped him.; 7/24/09, 2:27 PM