To address a moment the sense of "creepiness" that some people see in Wesley Clark (Mickey Kaus, for one -- no, I won't link to him -- but also some folks in my e-mail discussion group expressed the feeling as well), I've just watched him give a speech on C-SPAN, and I think it has to be said that the oddness of his visual aspect is pretty much all in his eyes (although there's also the problem of the almost feminie delicateness of his face seen from certain angles.)
First off is the well known fact that he blinks a lot less often than most people -- 2 to 4 times a minute as opposed to an average blink rate of 15 to 20 times a minute. That's really a significant difference, and quite noticeable, but it's compounded by the fact that Clark's eyes seem to be much more open than those of most men. (I say men, because women tend to do things to their eyes with makeup that make then appear to be more open -- and it would interesting to know the evolutionary psychology behind that widespread behavior, but I don't have it at hand -- which makes it difficult to compare the visual aspects of the eyes across genders.)
C-SPAN followed Clark with a speech by Edwards, and the contrast was striking. When Edwards' eyes were normally open all the way, they seemed to take up at most 3/4 of the total opening, the rest being the eyelid, and he blinked at what appeared to be a normal rate. Occasionally, when making a point, Edwards would open his eyes even wider than normal as if to emphasize what he was saying. Clark's eyes, on the other hand, take up what appears to be almost 100% of the eye opening and his eyelid almost disappears. The space above his eye to the eyebrow is also quite small, and his eyebrows appear fairly bushy, and the total combination of these physical characteristics is that his irises appear to be really quite huge. (Maybe they are huge, I don't know how much variation there is in the size of human irises). He almost appears like something out of a painting by Keane, but without the kitschy, sappy emotionality.
Aside from blinking very rarely and his eyes appearing to be very large, he also didn't make use of his eyes in concert with what he was saying. One could say that his eye-expression vocabulary was extremely limited compared to Edwards', and, indeed, compared to most people. What Clark does well is forceful and direct eye contact, and this may have been good for him if he has had to address large groups of soldiers without benefit of television screens to show close ups. The wide-open eyes can be easily read from a distance, and they have no trouble expressing fortitude, strongness and determination, all good qualities in a general, but they seem to be less good at expressing other things, like empathy, tenderness and so on.
Which is not to say that Clark doesn't feel these emotions, or that he's a hard man, I don't have any reason to believe that's the case at all, but it does seem to me that, as regards his face, at least, his visual aspect is somewhat less than perfect for a politician's.
P.S. C-SPAN followed Edwards with Bush making a speech somewhere, and he did all sorts of things with his eyes before I turned him off to watch... well, anything else, really, even self-indulgent crappy made-for-$2 monologues on public access are better to watch than Bush ... so he did all these things to express his empathy, his caring, his forcefulness, his sense of humor, and I didn't believe a single one of them, because the eyes behind the symphony of facial expressions are dead and hard and lifeless. Molly Ivins may say it's hard to dislike this guy if you're in the same room with him, but I think if you keep your focus on his eyes, it would be a lot harder to make yourself like him.
Update: It should go without saying, but here it is, that I don't think anything about Clark's visual aspect should disqualify him from being President, but it is a harsh fact that how people respond to a candidate's physicality can be an important factor in who wins elections.
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Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
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Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
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