I watched the first Mike Wallace clip. I will have to do those in bits and pieces.
Yup, she’s really kind of a troll, isn’t she? That is what is so strange about her heroines being so gorgeous. I’d want to make my heroine attractive, without needing the “legs like a dancer” sort of thing going on. It was Dagny’s mind that contained the true beauty. Hey, my vanity is such that I put my make-up on every day (well, except Saturdays....), so I’m not dismissing feminine attractiveness completely.
But, If I’m Ayn Rand, I’d be making my leading lady a little more in the realm of the human in terms of looks if she is going to be such a hot-shot business woman. I’d be making Dagny a little closer to the real Ayn.
Face it, there are very few Ann Coulters running around. I would have to hate Ann if she didn’t make me laugh hard enough to snort coffee thru my nose.
Sometimes great beauty and great talent/accomplishments do go hand in hand.
You mentioned Ann Coulter but also Michelle Malkin, in the field of Music..Dianna Krall.
Rand wasn’t so much trollish as she was unkempt. She had that bohemian Russian thing going on.
I wonder if there are pictures of her when she was young?
In her interview with Donahue, Rand talks about how much she admires beauty. (Her favorite TV show at the time was Charlie's Angels, believe it or not.) I don't get the impression that she was trying to model the character, Dagny, after herself. If I'm calculating correctly, Rand was in her 50's when she wrote AS, whereas Dagny is in her 30's. I think she crafted the image of Dagny into something she herself would admire in someone else.