I know the readership here is not a scientific sample, but I can't resist polling:
ADDED: Poll results:
January 28, 2018
"Are there really a lot of people who find Trump refreshing, who found Obama 'glossily beautiful'?"
Asks Angel-Dyne in the comments to a post where I dropped an aside: "And by the way, maybe Barack Obama was too glossily beautiful and that's how we developed a taste for Trump."
I know the readership here is not a scientific sample, but I can't resist polling:
ADDED: Poll results:
I know the readership here is not a scientific sample, but I can't resist polling:
ADDED: Poll results:
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80 comments:
"Glossy" meaning "slippery" and
"beautiful" meaning "big purplish ears".
Obama was a piece of shit from the word go. Women loved him.
"Are there really a lot of people who find Trump refreshing, who found Obama 'glossily beautiful'?"
Outside the masses of retired law profs in Madison, WI? No.
Anyway, I find the notion of O being "beautiful," "glossily" or not, puzzling. But my distaste for NeverTrumpers is greater than my distaste for Trump, and I find Trump's policies refreshing after the darkly sordid years of the O administration.
“Glossily Beautiful?” Maybe we should dig up Cary Grant.
Oops, forgot. Cary was a Brit.
Ugly is as ugly does.
I judge a man by the content of his character, not the look on his face.
Wow! This is an exciting poll! A real horserace. There are 2 big competitors and the lead keeps changing. Meade is announcing the race out loud.
You left out "I found Obama disgusting and similarly lack a taste for Trump"
Obama was a piece of shit from the word go.
Is this the level of conversation this blog has lowered itself to?
Disgusting.
I couldn't find an acceptable choice. Obama is a photogenic lightweight whose only talent was getting influential people excited about him (which says more about how we dole out influence than it does about Obama). Trump is that beater wagon you're embarrassed to be seen driving, but you do anyway because it will get you where you need to go.
I supported Obama in 2008. I thought he would be a good person to heal 8 years of strife. I thought he'd do great things in healing the racial divide.
Was I wrong.
I detested Trump ling before he decided to run for president. I respected his ability to say true things that no one else had the balls to say but I never wanted him as president. I very reluctantly voted for him. More as a reward for addressing the issues killing the working people than like for him. I thought if he lost a close race then future better politicians would follow his lead. I was shocked and dreaded his election. I've been pleasantly surprised.
I'm a horrible political analyst.
@ Freder - I appreciate rhhardin not wasting our time with a litany of Obama's shortcomings.
Freder Frederson said...
"Obama was a piece of shit from the word go."
Is this the level of conversation this blog has lowered itself to?
Disgusting.
Not that I think you're trying to impress me, but if you want to impress me, try tackling the best comments, the hardest arguments. Go after the easy ones and all you'll get is a yawn. (At least you kept it short, that was thoughtful.)
"Piece of shit" is a highly tuned phrase for exactly Obama.
Women don't do systems or they'd have seen through Obama right away as well. Guys were repulsed. He just wants women's votes, we said to ourselves, and women will vote for him too.
Obama was/is really not beautiful and I always suspect people who insist he is/was are kind of "my black best friend"-ing. Trying to prove how much they love the first black president by insisting he is beautiful. But he's no Denzel, no Idris, no Boris Kodjoe.
Bill, RoT at 9:50 me too. I didn't end up voting for Obama in 2008, but I really thought he meant to be a thoughtful leader. Nope.
After Mitt Romney lost, and was made to look so "scary", I lost my ability to have my finger on the pulse of the American people.
Systems is why the New England Patriots win consistently.
The last poll choice is an acknowledgment that political moderates still around.
While I agree that Obama was charismatic and that many of the things he said prior to being elected were delivered beautifully, I never could see him as beautiful due to my early on being aware of his core political principles and my disdain for those principles. He does have a striking physical presence; it's a shame he is so rotten at the core. Trump, as a younger man, had such charisma and physical presence. I never thought he delivered anything beautifully, I thought he was making a mockery of the 2016 GOP primary and detested him for it, but I now find that his ability to make fools of progressive media figures and mealy mouthed politicians is divine.
The question itself seems to have been posed by someone with a mind sickly oriented to the bizarre and trivial.
I was never attracted to Obama. I took a good hard look at his background and saw no meaningful experience or accomplishments. I did not think he would be a racial healer. I was right. I was never attracted to Trump. As with Obama, I do not like the superficial cult of personality/celebrity. However, I felt that there would be no turning back with Hillary as president and I had no alternative but to vote for Trump. He still grates on me, but he's exceeded my expectations.
"A taste for Trump?"
DIsgusting.
Let me guess: Hairspray, sweat and cellulite. The flavors that taunt the tongues of those with a taste for Trump.
And orange tanning application.
”Obama is sometimes attractive and Trump has his good points, but I don't care in a personal way. Just get the policies right and spare me the showbiz aspect of politics.times.”
I wish I could have voted a hundred times. The policies are deathly important. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the showbiz crap.
What's lacking in today's politicians, thanks to women voters, is mansplaining.
How stuff works turns women off.
Orange you glad Trump is president.
Blogger tim maguire said...”Trump is that beater wagon you're embarrassed to be seen driving, but you do anyway because it will get you where you need to go.”
I like it.
..he's exceeded my expectations.
Not mine. I expected that he could dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not merely defund it.
My expectations are so unexceeded. Who are these "consumers" anyway and why should their financial interests need protection? Are they billionaires? Board members? Donors and Fat Cat Cabinet Members? Then who cares about them!
Getting ready to fight the next ten wars OTOH that's important. As is polluting our waterways and saving a 19th century coal industry that employs fewer workers than Arby's - all at the cost to the federal government of paying to treat the black lung disease they all get by age 40. Now those are priorities, Ma'am! Very professional!
And spending half his waking hours worrying about how someone said something mean about him. The very qualities founders were looking for when they chose Washington.
Now did Washington have "bone spur"-related military deferments - on a foot whose identity - right or left - was forgotten?
And we call ourselves a nation! Our very founder can't compare to the mountain of a man that Resident Trump is.
The glossy shiny kitchens weren't real and neither was the glossy, shiny Obama. Both were media creations.
Sure, a lot of people were sick of the phoniness on offer from pro politicians trying to imitate the Obama formula (as if they could) and found the raw Trump style refreshing.
The next lot will try a phony version of Trump's style. They already are, Democrats using profanity for example. But that won't work either. The public will be ready for polish again by then.
LMFAO.
This isn’t a poll; it isn’t even much of a survey of the stilted, tiny demographic that serves as the Althouse commentariat.
It’s an Ann Althouse therapy session.
Obama - The slick packaging that hid the reality of his taking our hard earned money and giving it to faux-bogus green boondoggles and mega health insurance companies.
I found Obama ugly and developed a taste for Trump.
I still say Obama was one of our all time great presidents. Maybe the greatest.
1 he convinced the American people once and for all that big, central, powerful govt is the problem not the solution
2 except for a few enclaves he turned the us solid red. Look at a us map by county
3 he killed for 100 years the idea of government health care for all
4 he brought us president trump
And more....
By incompetence?
By design?
Don't know and don't care. The result is the same regardless of motive.
John Henry
Chuck,
Out.
Trump was actually very attractive as a young man. Hey! Who amongst us wasn't cuter, better looking young than old. Donald Trump is in his 70's now and to compare his looks to a young person is ridiculous
Young Trump vs. Old Trump Photo proof
The idea that we should choose our political leaders based on their "glossy good looks" is shallow and ridiculous.
We all age and we all lose that bloom of youth. We sag. We wrinkle. Our hair gets thin. We gain weight in areas that are not attractive. We lose our muscle tone. We have to work harder to stay fit. Get used to it!
Hopefully as we age and lose our youth, we also gain something. Experience. Knowledge. Skills. And the realization that we are NOT the center of the Universe. All things that Obama, despite his (so called) good looks has yet to learn and probably never will.
I don’t find Obama to be glossing beautiful at all....but his self regard was so vast his own wife didn’t even notice it. So there’s that.
However, I thought he might make a good president until I learned how often he stayed on the sidelines in Chicago. Leaders don’t do that.
Freder: Is this the level of conversation this blog has lowered itself to?
No. You just kicked it lower.
I'm a straight male so I rarely find other men "beautiful." (Okay, Steve Reeves, maybe.) But Obama looked like just a big dumb lug to me, an impression confirmed every time he spoke without a teleprompter. P. J. O'Rourke was probably on to add something when he wrote that by Obama's second term, canny "liberals"--who had been puffing up his image as this real smart guy--were probably realizing that the Red Diaper Wunderkind was, in reality, not all that bright; but they had to go along
with pretending that he was for fear of being called racists.
Meade,
Nice going.
Chuck needs to start his own blog. Maybe that's what he is angling for.
rhhardin: Guys were repulsed. He just wants women's votes, we said to ourselves, and women will vote for him too.
If by "guys" you mean "white men", then yeah.
Re Obama support, white women were less guy-ish than white men, but more guy-ish than non-white men, who were more guy-ish than non-white women, though still overwhelmingly non-guyish.
Obama is a white guy from Hawaii.
You know who elsr was elected on his good looks?
Jfk
Epic fail
John Henry
I like the way Chuck whiplashes from sycophancy to gormless spergy vituperation.
"Bwa ha, bwa ha, this Trumpkin-enabling blogger and her Trumpkins don't realize that this isn't a statistically valid poll, bwa ha, bwa ha!"
William
I used to be a huge pj orourk fan. Loved natlamp, have mosy of his books, listened to podcasts with him.
Then he supported Hillary.
Wtbf?
Had the past 50 years been an act?
John Henry
Trump and Obama are more alike than different. They are both incredible narcissists whose greatest skill is putting on a show, each a reality-show star in his own way. They both have a (let's say) instrumental relationship with the truth - "keep your doctor" vs. "Mexico will pay for it." Each is leading his own parade, embodying his fan's fantasies while baiting his opponents into a form of madness. The style is very different but the essence is quite similar, although most people are in one parade or the other and can't appreciate that.
Obama has those gross purple lips. He and Michael Wolff could be kissing cousins.
Angel-Dyne asked: And by the way, maybe Barack Obama was too glossily beautiful and that's how we developed a taste for Trump.
Good or bad looks need not enter in. I suggested years ago:
"Has anyone considered that Donald Trump is a natural and completely predictable political reaction to the Obama Administration and its political privations?" 8/3/15, 9:18 AM
Bottom line, if we had real newspapers with real reporters instead of the self important pant loads we have now we wouldn’t have the worst pols since the runup to the civil war.
I had forgotten about this tweet. Certainly not glossy or beautiful.
And Michael at 11:01 is exactly right.
Althouse, you forgot the choice "Trump is dreamy". I know you have had a couple of dreams about him. I'm almost certain Inga, TTR, and quite possibly Chuck have had dreams (nightmares?) about him, due to the obsession they have with him. I'm also sure that's what the women's march was all about too. I'm sure heard several of them say how dreamy he was. And to boot he seems to a big fan of Dreamers lately.
So Trump is Dreamy is what I'm going with.
The female reporters in the media think Obama's cock is beautiful
Anyone have any doubts CNN would be playing this on repeat if it was Trump?
If Obama faced a 10th of the scrutiny Trump has his popularity would be mid 20's.
PJ O'Rourke is essentially a snob.
He is insightful and very amusing, but a snob.
Like many of his kind, he had the "noveau" thing going, in that he wanted to fit in with the Ivy league gentry. He got there through the National Lampoon, which of course had its roots in Harvard and its Harvard grad founders. O'Rourke, son of a car salesman, strove to achieve and join this upper class tribe. He succeeded, more or less.
A very great deal of politics is of course tribal. In practice class is a tribe, or collection of tribal markers, more than it is an economic category (ref Orwell, "Wigan Pier", etc.).
And much of the tribal spirit is unconscious aesthetic reactions, which clever people are well equipped to rationalize. We are lousy at truly objective self-examination.
This is, or was, an objective of old-school Catholic practice, to honestly reveal the self, the exercise of confession, retreats, rituals of humility. All this is going away.
Obama is an oleaginous cover over a vicious street gangster. Any marginally decent human being would have been an improvement.
Gee Mom,
I just thought he was a two-bit phony who got a lot of help.
The kind of person who found Obama glossily beautiful would be the same kind of person who creamed his jeans when he saw the sharpness of Obama's pant crease.
Obama is so dirty that it will take years to clean up his mess at the DOCP.
“Obama was a piece of shit from the word go.
Is this the level of conversation this blog has lowered itself to?
Disgusting.”
All ideology aside, Obama was clearly a piece of shit long before he was in the public eye. He’s just so obviously that type, the user, the manipulator, the simpering con man, toadying and condescending in the same moment. Any student of human nature would recognize his line of bullshit in a minute.
What? There's no option for "I find Obama and Trump both deplorable liars and frauds."
"All ideology aside, Obama was clearly a piece of shit long before he was in the public eye. He’s just so obviously that type, the user, the manipulator, the simpering con man, toadying and condescending in the same moment. Any student of human nature would recognize his line of bullshit in a minute."
Apt words. They're equally applicable to Trump, though for Trump, substitute "braying" for "simpering," "grandiose" for "toadying" and "self-aggrandizing" for "condescending."
No question that Obama made Trump possible, Bob. For myself, I like this iteration a lot better, though.
None of the above.
People only thought Obama was "pretty" and "attractive" and "nice" because the media portrayed him that way.
Trump is nicer, more honest, and more decent than Obama. If the media gave Trump the same treatment it gave Obama Trump would be liked more than Obama. Obama is only different from Stalin or Castro or Chavez in one way: he was stopped.
Everyone knows Obama used the government civil service to spy on and persecute political opponents.
At this point how you react to this fact reflects on you.
"P. J. O'Rourke is essentially a snob."
Well, me too. So no problem there.
Glossily beautiful with a strong streak of goofiness. Not knocking it but have always wondered why no one talked about it.
"But he's no Denzel, no Idris, no Boris Kodjoe."
Yeah, but "politics is Hollywood for ugly people," so he has to be judged on the political scale. Gorgeous for a politician.
Trump seems to have far superior social skills. One gets the impression that he could get along with literally anyone.
Cookie,
For the sake of argument, let's say you are right.
Was Obama working to make America better like Trump appears to be doing?
NYT 2009:
Ann Althouse, 58, is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who blogs about politics, law and cultural whatnots in a sharp, occasionally ribald tone. She admires Rush Limbaugh, voted for George Bush in ’04 and Barack Obama in ’08. She attracts derision and applause from 500,000 monthly visitors.
This bit of fake news is no doubt true.
And every day the commenter who posted it attracts the residence of 500,000 fleas and ticks.
"Was Obama working to make America better like Trump appears to be doing?"
What is Trump doing that appears to be an attempt to make America better?
"Trump seems to have far superior social skills. One gets the impression that he could get along with literally anyone."
An essential skill for any con man.
Gee, if Trump is a good con man (and I'm not saying he isn't), Cookie and the Toothless State-fellator must regret he didn't choose to go with their gang of mountebanks (aka The Hive) and use his con skills to peddle their brand of snake oil.
Can you kindly repost that in English, William Chadwick? I don't speak Dan Brown, Nazi, Alex Jones or John Birch language.
Cookie wrote: "What is Trump doing that appears to be an attempt to make America better?"
Are you Inga's fraternal twin?
"Are you Inga's fraternal twin?"
I do have a fraternal twin, but it is not Inga.
Robert Cook said...
"Was Obama working to make America better like Trump appears to be doing?"
What is Trump doing that appears to be an attempt to make America better?
He passed a tax reform bill that is bringing capital flooding back into the country from overseas.
Employment and wages are up.
No new wars. He has even ended at least one of Obama/Clinton's dumber fails.
And Illegal Immigration is being dealt with appropriately that includes the voices of the majority of Americans who want an end to illegal immigration.
The best thing Trump is doing for the country is crushing the regulatory state. Even more than tax reform this is why things are finally moving again.
What is Trump doing that appears to be an attempt to make America better?
Cutting taxes, reforming immigration and sticking up for American interests internationally is a good start.
Keeping Democrats out of power is all that is necessary though.
"He passed a tax reform bill that is bringing capital flooding back into the country from overseas."
Is it?
"Employment and wages are up."
Are they? How much? What kind of jobs? (That is...are they substantial jobs with good pay, benefits, and career tracks, or low-wage no-benefit service jobs, temp jobs, part-time jobs, second and third jobs to meet the bills, etc.? How much employment "growth" is really just a "reduction" in unemployment, i.e., not counting all those unemployed who have stopped looking for jobs?)
"No new wars. He has even ended at least one of Obama/Clinton's dumber fails."
He's just continuing all the ongoing wars. What war did Trump end?
We have forces in countries all over the world engaged in operations of one kind or another. What do we know about these operations? What are our forces doing and why? How much is it all costing us? Who approved these ongoing operations?
I'll give Obama this. He was master of the long con. He fooled so many people. Of course every one of those people wanted to be fooled.
I warned you suckers.
Trump is Agent 007 for the Death Instinct.
"Keeping Democrats out of power is all that is necessary though." Yes, that's my favorite part . . . particularly the Alinskyite Witch known as Queen Cacklepants.
Plus, the way Trump gives the "liberal Hive" conniptions. I wasn't a fan at first, but if he's causing such distress among those scummy State-fellators, he has to be doing something right.
But I'm reserving final judgment until his term in office has expired. Then, on the balance, if he's taken us off the Road to Serfdom that Obama was taking us down, and the net result of Trump's presidency is significantly less statism and a freer society, then I'll rejoice and wish him another term. If not, than servile creatures like Robert Cook can do the rejoicing.
Is this the level of conversation this blog has lowered itself to?
OK. Obama was a shithole.
Better?
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