If Bachmann and Palin Weren't Pretty

Marty Kaplan
HuffPost
Posted: 05/27/11

I wonder how much airtime Michele Bachmann would get if she didn't look the way she does. I wonder how much of Sarah Palin's political appeal arises from her physical appeal.

I have a feeling that wondering this will get me in hot water, but what the hell.

I think Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is pretty. I think that Sarah Palin is pretty, too. I'm not saying they're smokin' hot babes. I'd reserve that for someone younger, like Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. If I were in my 20s, I suppose that having any corporeal thoughts at all about these women would be, as the kids say, ewwww. But from my boomer perspective, they're real lookers.

Now given my politics, you would think that my knowing what Bachmann and Palin say and stand for would be a total turnoff, but my familiarity with their wingnut views seems to cause no diminution of my spontaneous appreciation of their assets. Even Dana Perino, who as press secretary defended the indefensible George W. Bush, makes my head turn.

(More here.)