Who Cares About the Issues: Is That Botox?

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Who Cares About the Issues: Is That Botox?
By MARC SANTORA
Published: October 26, 2006

....looks have always mattered in politics, and in an age of 24-hour television news, it has become even more relevant.

What was especially intriguing about (Senator Clinton's GOP opponent John Spencer's) off-the-cuff remarks, as reported in The Daily News, was his speculation that Mrs. Clinton had evolved from an ugly duckling to the presentable 59-year-old woman she is today with the help of “millions of dollars” of “work.”...

***

Dr. Cap Lesesne, a board-certified plastic surgeon, has been performing cosmetic surgery for two decades, but he said that it was not until about 10 years ago that he began to see politicians at his Upper East Side practice. In the past five years, he has treated at least 18 federal, state and local officials, he said. And, he said, he knows of six United States senators who have had plastic surgery....Being in the public spotlight almost daily and worried about getting caught in the surgery act, “they have to go to extreme lengths,” Dr. Lesesne said. Surgeons, he said, can become co-conspirators in the deception by, for instance, going through the mouth to hide incisions....

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Obsession with looks by politicians and voters is hardly a new phenomenon. It may be an accident of history, but William Howard Taft, at 320 pounds, was the last obese president, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last bald president, had to win World War II before he was elected.

Even as far back as 1860, looks were raised in a letter to an aspiring presidential candidate.

With a beard, “You would look a great deal better, for your face is so thin,” wrote Grace Bedell, 11. “All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president."

The reply came back promptly four days later:

“As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?

“Your very sincere well-wisher, A. Lincoln.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/fashion/26looks.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

[Nikki Stone 1]

1. So now repugs can hide the evil in their faces with an extreme makeover, eh?

We'll just have to develop hand signals or something.

[zbdent]

2. So, a Republican changes his "policy" due to a poll

of one ...