blog report

Fatuousness and Fat

June 9, 2004

The conservative corners of the blogosphere are embroiled in debate over the “fatuousness” of comparing former California Governor Ronald Reagan to present-day governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Andrew Sullivan, who sees the Gipper in the Governator, posts a reader email arguing that the latter is the former’s “spiritual clone”: “… another immigrant who sought his fortune in Hollywood, who ousted an incumbent Democratic governor with a color in his name (Gray instead of Brown) on the promise to clean up the mess in Sacramento, whose political skills are sometimes underestimated, and who out-Reagans Reagan in exuding can-do optimism.”

Sullivan’s sparring partner, Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner, responds with only the faintest hint of sarcasm: “Sullivan clearly has the better of the argument. Reagan and Schwarzenegger both beat incumbent Democratic governors with colors in their name: Pat Brown and Gray Davis. If that isn’t a crushing rejoinder, I don’t know what is.”

And the sarcasm continues over at Pandagon, where Jesse Taylor attacks Brent Bozell for going back to the 1980s to criticize press coverage of Reagan, “since he can’t find anything to complain about in the coverage” today. “Amazingly,” adds Taylor, “during the entire period from 1980 to 1992, negative things were said about Ronald Reagan’s time in office.”

Meanwhile, Noah Scheiber at The New Republic, in true counterintuitive fashion, argues that Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times are wrong — the timing of Reagan’s death is actually good for Kerry, not Bush. Writes Scheiber:

This, after all, was the week Bush was supposed to recast himself as a president who plays well with others. Since the press was clearly gearing up to provide wall to wall coverage of his foreign travels and meetings, it’s hard to see how Kerry wouldn’t have “disappeared from public view altogether” anyway. Now Reagan’s death pushes Bush to the margins of public view, too — essentially freezing the race where it was beforehand. If I’m Kerry, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Finally, Unfogged informs us that there’s a correlation between obesity and voting habits. Since, to the naked eye, Bush seems quite trim, Kerry gaunt and Nader bordering on skeletal, it’s hard to figure who would be the candidate of the horizontally endowed. But Unfogged points us to a chart that tells us that, with a few exceptions, states that are more obese tended to vote for Bush in 2000, while the thinner states went for Gore. In a country where nutritionists assure us we’re growing fatter by the year, that has to bode well for the president.

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–Brian Montopoli

Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.