Bottom Line: Following the recent vile story from the New York Times on traditional Christians and Fred Thompson’s wife (we are evidently disturbed by her tan), I decided to help the Times by writing their next absurd story for them.
Traditional Christians Worried About Attractiveness of Candidates
“Where is it going to end?” Sally Smith looked at the handsome Mitt Romney as he shook hands in the arena. “Sixty years old and a full head of hair . . . there is something funny going on there. It just isn’t right.”
Smith, who once voted in a Republican primary, voices a concern that reporters are hoping to hear on the campaign trail: some of the candidates for President and their spouses are just too attractive for conservative religious voters.
While no voters have brought the issue up without prompting, show them a picture of Fred Thompson’s attractive wife, and voters, especially men start talking. “Wow.” one commented who admitted he had once attended an Evangelical church. “What did you say her name was?”
Jeri Kehn Thompson may be too pretty for the Religious Right said ACLU spokesman Alcibiades Antinous in a recent interview when asked about Thompson and his youthful wife. “It may be sexist and seem out of touch in these days of women’s liberation, but how is the denim dress league going to respond to an attractive forty year old woman?”
When asked local members of the Iowa Republican Party refused to confirm rumors that campaign computers had been set to block images of Ms. Thompson.
“I am not a bigot,” one activist said, “But I have to repeat what some people I read on the ‘net say, because, you know, they are saying it. And what they are saying is what they are saying whether people like it or not. The Thompson camp is going to have to deal with it. I mean, how can someone have a tan like that in January?”
The issue does not end with Thompson as Romney’s wife seems strangely youthful and provocatively attractive to some people we found on the Internet. She simply does not fit the iconic image of a religious right grandmother, such as the beloved Granny Clampett, that many in the movement are rumored to enjoy.
“Will religious right women be able to relate to a blond Mormon?” one critic of traditional Christians asked. “I know the question is offensive, but it is being asked in Internet chat rooms. She is Mormon. She is blond. Did I mention she is a Mormon as well as blond? How many people do most of us know like that?”
The Giuliani campaign, in one chat room rumor, has been so concerned about the issue and the rugged, manly looks of their candidate that it has urged the former mayor to bring back the comb-over he sported in the late nineties. “Nothing says serious to a religious voter like a bad comb over,” one chat room commentator known only as Rudy2008777 noted.
Most of the Republican candidates have been trying to lose tans or other signs of health. One campaign, which was off the record, noted that their candidate looked cranky and old all the time. “We are ahead of the curve on this issue . . .” he noted and then apologized for using the word “curve.”
Campaigns might pass out copies of the Little House books and try to imitate the style there said one off-the-record Republican activist. “And I don’t mean those Little House the new generation books . . . full of pinafores and sans bonnets” she noted with a grim smile.
Many noted the Gilmore camp may utilize the fact that nobody can remember what their candidate looks like to their advantage. “Nobody ever had a bad thought when seeing Jim Gilmore,” one high school girl friend was rumored to have said after being reminded that she had dated him for four years of high school.
Campaigns are also concerned that too many children bring up uncomfortable issues for the religious voters. Noting many of the candidates sport multiple children, including Romney’s five sons with one woman, Antinous commented, “It makes you think if you are a religious voter. And it is the thinking, about that, that raises issues for the religious right. I mean none of those lads were adopted. What is going on here?”
Libertarian candidate Ron Paul recently had an unexpected flurry of Internet mailing activity centered around the issue of his relative unmanly appearance. “I mean nobody is going to confuse Paul with Davy Crockett,” one chat room denizen noted. “He is cute without any taint of, well, you know. In a nation at war, I think it is good to nominate someone who looks like the dentist-elf in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.”
“It is not the procreation thing that bothers us,” one unnamed Christian activist noted, “it is that the attractiveness of the candidates might lead to dancing amongst the faithful.”
And it is that issue that is most likely to continue to stir up the voters with reports that John McCain was recently seen dancing with his youthful wife. “All those blondes,” Smith said with a sigh, “And now the dancing.”