Mocking people's looks as a substitute for substantive criticism of their positions is, of course, nonsense. But in the age of television, pretending that looks don't matter, or won't influence how people will vote, is equally nonsensical. It's a looksist world, as you of all people ought to be aware.
When candidates are brought into everyone's living room by the power of television, you can pretty much bet that the fat, the disfigured, and the otherwise untelegenic will never be contenders for major political office. William Howard Taft was only possible as a pre-television President. One of the ways the modern media has too powerful a distorting effect on politics is the way that they can selectively distort our image of a candidate (think of Howard Dean's 'crazy' yell and how that one de-contextualized clip affected his run for the presidency), and that's only true precisely because voters will be swayed by appearances.
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Date: 2008-02-28 06:57 pm (UTC)When candidates are brought into everyone's living room by the power of television, you can pretty much bet that the fat, the disfigured, and the otherwise untelegenic will never be contenders for major political office. William Howard Taft was only possible as a pre-television President. One of the ways the modern media has too powerful a distorting effect on politics is the way that they can selectively distort our image of a candidate (think of Howard Dean's 'crazy' yell and how that one de-contextualized clip affected his run for the presidency), and that's only true precisely because voters will be swayed by appearances.