Donald Trump excoriated a reporter who, unsmiling, asked about Jeffrey Epstein's victims. Trump, of course, does not want to hear the name Jeffrey Epstein, for reasons we can all imagine, and he launched into his customary assault on the reporter as a worthless piece of failure, who works for a failing network, a place for losers like her.
He never answered the question about Epstein, but he did launch into a new line of attack on the reporter. She clearly did not qualify as a Miss Piggy, being svelte and comely, but Mr. Trump, always looking for the point of entry, the chink in the armor, assailed her for failing to be able to smile.
What kind of a woman never smiles?
Such a nasty woman.
She replied that she was asking about victims of sexual predation, of pedophilia, and that did not seem to be something you'd want to smile about.
None of that registered with Trump who was off into a tirade about worthless, lying news media types.
Trump, ironically, has made unsmiling a thing.
He laughs and smiles at his rallies and in the Oval Office, looking like a latter day Hermann Goering, enjoying his power and affluence, but he has been careful to cultivate a stern, powerful man image as well. Just look at his official Presidential photo, which is hung in every government office building by the Government Service Administration, a practice which has always struck Mad Dog as positively Hitler-arean. But, the Presidential photo has been adorning walls of government buildings for decades, if not generations.
Trump's is almost a parody of Hitler's.
This cannot be a coincidence.
Some common driving force must account for these visages.
Tough guys do not smile.
In Hampton, there are elections in March and the Democratic candidates, mostly men, have been admonished by the party operatives, almost entirely women, to smile for their campaign photos.
Bronze Star, but he Smiles
As politically incorrect as it may be to observe, every single Democratic woman has reacted to unsmiling male candidates with horror, saying they have to look "approachable" and less "severe."
The few male members of the Democratic Party apparatus who have commented have said, "Well, it wouldn't hurt to smile." But the gender divide cannot be just a case of individual preference; it has got to be a gender difference.
Women, Mad Dog ventures to postulate, want their men cuddly, warm, friendly, "nice," and smiling.
Men, on the other hand, Mad Dog observes, are not so inclined. They tend to want men in office who project strength, a willingness to be not liked, a willingness to offend to get their point made.
Some years ago, during an open primary for a Congressional seat, eleven candidates emerged. One was a former combat veteran, a winner of a Bronze star, who had fought in Iraq. He smiled occasionally, but every woman who came to the house party where he spoke to a dozen different questions about abortion, immigration, health care, and crime--he was a former US attorney who prosecuted drug cartels--every woman thought him too aggressive, not "nice."
The winner of the primary turned out to be a very nice man, with a warm smile, gay, who some men described as a "house cat," and the reservations the male voters had about him was that to send him to Washington to spar with Jim Jordan would be like sending a man to a knife fight with a spoon.
The woman loved him.
The Democratic women.
Mad Dog asks: Is it any wonder there is a gender divide in exits polls, with the Democrats losing the male voters, especially among males who never went to college?
Mad Dog does not think so.
