Thurston Howell from Gilligan's Island
John Kerry as "Alpha Weenie"
Posted on 03/31/2004 9:27:36 PM PST by MNJohnnie
JOHN KERRY reminds you of someone, but you can't put your finger on it, right?
Allow me to help.
Bookish people and television people generally carry different archetypes around in their heads, but neither group seems to able to quite put their finger on Kerry. They have seen this face, this style before. But where?
First, the small box people. John Kerry is M*A*S*H's Major Frank Burns, returned to bluster and badger and arrogantly attempt to command his betters. To those below him, Burns was a constant pain. To those above, he was obsequious in the extreme. Towards his tentmates--whom he could not believe were his equals--he was always condescending, the perfect combination of insecurity and inflated self-esteem.
Some might argue that Major Charles Emerson Winchester III is really a better match for Kerry, especially given Winchester's ponderous accent and attention to breeding.
But it's really Burns who captures the essence of the Kerry style, so recently displayed when, following his collision with a Secret Service agent charged with protecting his life, Kerry came up cursing the agent. We lack the information to make any comparisons between Theresa and Major Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan, but both at least share a tendency toward outspokenness.
FOR THE LITERARY MINDED, the match is more obscure, but just as compelling. It requires a reach all the way back to the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, as arranged by Washington Irving, specifically to the character Ichabod Crane, who was "tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served as shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together." Ichabod's voice--"the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or of command; or peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge." Ichabod was quick to deal out punishment to his school charges, always accompanied by a lecture.
Ichabod was "a huge feeder," possessed of the "dilating powers of an anaconda." We don't know about John Kerry's appetite, but this makes for a good guess. And there is the vanity parallel: "It was a matter of no little vanity to [Ichabod], on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the psalm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation. . . ." Recall that Kerry's been in front of both Catholics and a largely African-American congregation these past three weeks, cameras in tow.
"[Ichabod] was in fact," Irving tells us, "an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity." Which brings to mind Kerry's approach to many subjects, from the September 11 Commission hearings to gas prices to the $87 billion for Iraq, which he famously voted both for and against.
Ichabod and Kerry can both own being skittish, enamored of an heiress, and bedeviled by a rival. Ichabod's was Brom Bones, "famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tome admitting of no gainsay or appeal. He was always willing for a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his over-bearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom." Who does that remind you of?
Maybe Hillary Clinton?
I KNEW IT.... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1105633/posts
. . . I do not think that they will sing for me.
Here's an older version that to me captures more of the slimy aspect of Crane:
The Disney cartoon is, of course, right out.
The intern, Alex Polier?
Q... arrogant, patronizing, eliteist, impetuous, and always wrong about the nature of Man.
Kerry indeed. Just brilliant, Hugh!
I KNEW IT....Great minds think alike. :o)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1105633/posts
From:
Title this picture of John Kerry
usnews ^ | March 25,2004
Posted on 03/26/2004 9:46:46 AM PST by AmericanMade1776
-- snip --
John Kerry looks like Ichabod Crane to me here.
1 posted on 03/26/2004 9:46:46 AM PST by AmericanMade1776
Good catch!
Mr Slope is tall, and not ill made. His feet and hands are large, as has ever been the case, with all his family, but he has a broad chest and wide shoulders to carry off these excrescences, and on the whole his figure is good. His countenance, however, is not specially prepossessing. His hair is lank, and of a dull pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them. He wears no whiskers, and is always punctiliously shaven. His face is nearly of the same colour as his hair, though perhaps a little redder: it is not unlike beef, - beef, however, one would say, of a bad quality. His forehead is capacious and high, but square and heavy, and unpleasantly shining. His mouth is large, though his lips are thin and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire anything but confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well-formed; though I myself should have liked it better if it did not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a red coloured cork.I never could endure to shake hands with Mr Slope. A cold, clammy perspiration always exudes from him, the small drops are ever to be seen standing on his brow, and his friendly grasp is unpleasant.
Alan Rickman played the man with too much character, but . . .
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