Glamour Is Back! - Donald Trump And Beauty Queens Are In; Frump, Flannel And Bad Hair Are Out

Let's face it, Republicans are the more beautiful party - or more appropriately said, Republicans in power are.  The MAGA unwashed, the troops from the hollers, plains, and prairies, may not be the image of Vogue, but those who rule are - presidents of big corporations, Wall Street investors, Senators, and of course Presidents of the United States. 

Democrats have been the party of frump, flannel, and bad hair; and the progressive wing even worse.  No party for the people can look like those who rule.  Nothing in their closets can smack of Louis XIV, the Sun King, bedecked in ermine, silk, jewels, and fine linen, nor even close.  Their victories were won by the likes of Samuel Gompers, an old Jewish man who, tired of sweat shops and pitiful pay, fed up with waiting for Yahweh to come to the aid of the seamstresses in Seventh Avenue lofts, took matters into his own hands and fought for justice - not in an elegant Italian suit, but an old American one, heavy in the shoulders, bulky, and mis-hemmed because of the miserable, dull light on the garment factory floor. 

 

Woody Guthrie, singer of the poor and downtrodden, the Okies of the Dust Bowl, the disadvantaged, and the forgotten was a simple man in simple clothes.  In fact every crusader for social justice, every man and woman concerned with the less fortunate and downtrodden felt right only in homespun, handwoven, simply made clothes.  Mahatma Gandhi was the symbol of peasant simplicity.  His image was the spinning wheel, and his loincloth and shawl were khadi made from the crudest cotton fiber. 

 

Beauty, lifted, rounded, and filled by Rodeo Drive surgeons was anathema to progressives.  Let the lines, wrinkles, and sags come on, badges of courage, earned through decades on freedom rides, at the barricades, and on mean streets for justice and equality, beaten by capitalist thugs and racist Southern pigs, bloodied and bruised but proud.  No glitz and glamour for them, no pretty faces showing wealth and white privilege. 

Of course many of today's progressives have left this old, Upper West Side Jewish look aside, and the pimp and ho ghetto look - rapper chic - has been the new fashion meme. 'The people' are no longer poor whites but poor blacks, and celebrating their culture is in. 

Those who are concerned socialists cannot give any inkling that they are not; and what do tinsel, dangly earrings, sequined sheaths, and high heels say if not exaggerated wealth earned on the backs of the poor? It's OK to have gold caps, platinum grills, stacked heels and zoot suits if you are black and wealthy - the streets have given back what the white man has taken - but no low-cut bodices, flip hair, Hollywood makeup, and stiletto heels if you are not a person of color.  

 

And if you are a committed, repentant white, you must show contrition and the painful suffering of others.  The corridors of Washington's non-profits are filled with bad hair and bad skin - acceptance of white guilt and solidarity with the nation's underserved. 

The Second Coming of Donald Trump is not just political, it is cultural - a revolutionary onslaught that will not only change the nature of government, but will set a new standard for looks. Middle-brow glitz, glamour, and showiness are in.  Hollywood, Las Vegas, and beauty pageants; yachts, resorts, and arm candy are the new iconic images for the world to see.  Blonde, blue-eyed, starlets; chiseled-chinned, sandy-haired leading men, the gorgeous, the undauntedly beautiful will lead the way. 

There was one Democrat, John Kennedy, who showed the country some style - Camelot, however, was a privileged, New England, aristocratic scene of tailored women, Pablo Casals and Robert Frost, old silver, Chippendale, and Townsend chairs.  It had nothing to do with either the culture or aspirations of most Americans.  Its royalty appealed, but in a storybook, fantasy dream.  The Trump women are real Americans, big-titted, glamorously made-up, high-stepping women right off the Vegas Strip. 

Bob Muzelle, a lifelong progressive, dutiful marcher and defender of the poor, and tireless champion of black people and women, felt the bile rise when he saw the first phalanx of Trump women come to town. It was bad enough that the man himself and his claque of insurrectionist, anti-democratic autocrats were about to take over the reins of government from a true patriot, a gentleman, a man of the people; but these ditzes, these blonde airheads, these bimbos were too much.  Not one woman of color among them, not one proud, African American, not one Dahomey, sculpted face.  It was a shameful, hateful display of white racism. 

Bob called for a meeting of his staff - Scientists for International Responsibility was a minor progressive lobby group - and asked them for their opinions on how to meet the scourge, the infection of the MAGA thugs. 

As he looked over the assembly and saw nothing but a general unkemptness, an indifference to appearance, a disordered, unappealing, almost disreputable unattractiveness, he like most men of his generation could only think of the blonde, sylph-like beauties of Hollywood, how he had wanted them and women like them, but ended up with Sylvia Goldberg, child of Lower East Side socialists, garment workers, laborites, and insufferable bores.  

What was he thinking? and now that he surveyed his stable of eager young men and women and saw this...this desperately unappealing group...he stopped in mid-sentence, disturbed by the image of Nancy Blythe, a stunningly sexy and beautiful girl, prom queen at New Brighton High, every boy's dream, but for him - a disassembled, porky, acned boy - impossible. 

 

'Colleagues', Bob said once he regained his composure, 'the fight lies ahead', but out the window fronting K Street he saw a group of Trump women - they had to be, so gorgeously blonde and blue-eyed were they - headed across Farragut Square to the White House.  He lost his train of thought, lost in a reverie of Nancy Blythe and her sleeveless blouses, stumbled on for a few more minutes, then excused himself. 

Could it be?  No, never in a million years would he ever cross the political divide, and certainly not for a busload of beautiful women; and yet....and yet the idea of governing surrounded by such nubile, pristine beauty was irresistible.  That old fucker Trump is almost eighty, Bob realized, and he is still surrounded by beautiful young things, squiring them, teasing them, loving them; while he sits in his decades old suit sitting in a shabby office surrounded by nothing but dire ugliness. 

Bob recovered, although not completely. After all he had given his whole life to social justice and the dedicated men and women who had sacrificed theirs for a greater cause, and could not turn his back on them however much he might like to. 

In the late Spring when he opened the windows to his office - it was so old one could indeed open the windows - he could hear the revelry on Pennsylvania Avenue down by the White House.  The beautiful young things were always spilling over onto the lawn, laughing and cheering, and he wanted to be there.

As much as they will deny it, deep down in every progressive soul is a Republican, someone who wants to give up the morose seriousness of social justice and have some fun.  It wasn't exactly that Bob had wasted his life, but certainly had Nancy Blythe given him the slightest hint of interest, his life would have been entirely different.