Posted on 12/29/2001 6:30:47 AM PST by veronica
He's vigorous. He's direct. At nearly 70, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is TV's newest stud.
Forget The Guardian's Simon Baker, Smallville's Tom Welling, or 24's Kiefer Sutherland. The sexiest man on television is a grandpop with a throaty laugh and a confidence so overpowering it's made entire countries go weak in the knees.
No doubt about it, Donald Rumsfeld is a stud muffin.
Oh sure, he's a bespectacled government bureaucrat pushing 70. But the secretary of defense has a quality that many women adore.
He's as self-assured as a bull in a cow pasture.
Next to this ex-Navy flyboy and self-made millionaire, humorless careerists are but empty suits, doubt-ridden heroes are boring, and sensitive New Age males look like big whiny babies.
Rumsfeld, in contrast, looks like a good time. In a recent interview, Larry King asked, "Secretary Rumsfeld . . . do you like this image? You now have this new image called sex symbol."
Rumsfeld laughed heartily and replied, "Oh, come on." But he seemed delighted, and later allowed that he could be a sex symbol "for the AARP."
He's direct, plainspoken, full of that quality John F. Kennedy so admired: vigor.
He enjoys sparring with reporters at news conferences. Exuding bonhomie, he gets his points across while revealing very little of what everybody is there to find out. These performances are among the best on television, depicted by political cartoonist Mike Peters as "Must See TV."
Rumsfeld is decisive, a quality Saturday Night Live recognized in a recent skit: The President is in a meeting, taking a call from boring Al Gore, who drones on and on while Bush's advisers point impatiently to their watches and Bush, a prisoner of his breeding, seeks a polite end to the conversation.
Rumsfeld strides in. Grasping the situation immediately, he grabs the receiver and barks, "Get off the phone, Al. Now!" A startled Gore hangs up.
Talk about a man of action.
In the Navy, Rumsfeld was a champion wrestler. Now, he hunts elk.
He's been around Washington forever - this is his second go-round as defense secretary - but it took a war to make him a celeb.
After attending Princeton University on a scholarship, he married his childhood sweetheart, Joyce, in 1954, served in the Navy, and did six years in Congress and four in the Nixon administration.
He was ambassador to NATO when President Gerald R. Ford called him back and made him the youngest defense secretary in the country's history. He wasn't well-liked. Over the years, he has annoyed people by ignoring criticism and pushing to get things done. He used to be called imperious. Now he's seen as determined.
He's also telegenic, which became apparent when the spotlight found him in September. The camera loves him. He's the media star of the war on terror.
He has reappeared on the scene at a time when popular culture is again embracing big-shouldered, go-for-it guys, from stoic Russell Crowe in the Oscar-winning Gladiator to bully Teddy Roosevelt in the best-selling Theodore Rex, to buff Will Smith as The Greatest in Ali.
Classical Roman virtues such as courage and determination, so passe in the high-flying '90s, are again in vogue.
Steely confidence is admired, in burly firemen, guys who attack armed hijackers with their bare hands, 19-year-olds who parachute into battlefields in the middle of the night - and straight-shooting Rummy, the senior with swagger.
Manly men, every one. It's good to have them back.
Yeah, what you said.
So yeah, I guess I do have a little bit of a crush on him. :-D
Agreed. I'd make his hot chocolate any night!!
Why is the media is always trying to foist Edwards off on the public as being handsome (along with John Kerry)? I don't see the attraction with either one of them.
Yes I do, as a matter of fact! I find it funny that even though he slaps them down they don't seem to resent him for it. I bet it's because he has earned their R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
That's the funniest thing I've read so far today. :-D
Oh, and I've been doing some serious shopping at a certain store, even ordering over the web when I can't find it in the store. :-)
I agree with you. Clinton's main job in life, I believe, was to get all of us into the gutter with him. Some of the people you mentioned, the liberals, the celebrities, the mainstream media, all those who pandered to Clinton, worked like dogs to push us all down with them. (Everytime I hear a comedian cracking a masturbation joke I feel myself being pulled into the gutter.) I know I wasn't the only one fighting to get loose of their hold but none of us escaped being soiled by it all. When Dubya became President we finally could wash the gutter water off ourselves.
It does feel real good to be standing on the sidewalk once again.
I went into Overlaugh on that one. Funny because it's true.
Steely confidence is admired, in burly firemen, guys who attack armed hijackers with their bare hands, 19-year-olds who parachute into battlefields in the middle of the night - and straight-shooting Rummy, the senior with swagger.
Manly men, every one. It's good to have them back.
Yes!!!
Oh sure, he's a bespectacled government bureaucrat pushing 70. But the secretary of defense has a quality that many women adore.
He's as self-assured as a bull in a cow pasture.
The whole thing is a little demeaning, it seems to me. Rumsfeld never set out to be anything but what he is, a no-nonsense administrater who has a job to do, and didn't let the '90s change his view of the right way to do things. The only reason anyone considers him sexy is because Clinton gave people the idea that his power was sexy. (It sure wasn't that flabby, pasty flesh of his). No Clinton, no talk of someone like Rumsfeld being "sexy". To coin a phrase, "let's move on", and get the policy debate away from such silly talk, which diminishes the importance of the matters at hand.
Let me help improve your morale a bit more. You wrote:
1. Bill Clinton forced all men into the gutter as he made himself, with the media's help, the lowest common denominator.1. (I think you meant Clinton forced the standard into the gutter, as if he were the standard most men would strive for (actually reinforcing the media's Feminazi expectations). But what you wrote lets me stress a more important point.)
2.It is refreshing to see people recognize true virtue and honor it.
3.It's just that we are working overtime to pull ourselves out of the gutter Clinton forced us all into, women included.
2.Yes it is. It's wonderful so many blossomed, that we recognize the real thing after so long a draught. It's also why articles like this one have popped up like toadstools after a soaking. See? The fungi, too, come out to the sites of known decay -- because that's all they know.
3.I doubt you were really there. But whether or not you were, you will help others see they're gonna be happier striving for the higher standard, and that is a very good standard to set for yourself. Keep it up. The battle has just begun.
Clinton NEVER gave sensible people the idea that his power was sexy. He just showed them that power can be sleazy!
Rumsfeld did not seek to have anyone think that he is sexy. WE decided that he was.
It's NOT demeaning to think someone is sexy and to say so!! To say that is to imply that we are incapable of having more than one thought at a time! We can be dead serious about politics - the war - and many other things and still think that Rummy is sexy!
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