Study: Conservative Candidates Are Better Looking

This was in the news last week.

The lefty sociologists who concluded this still have to spin for their freaking buddies.

“One possible explanation is that people who are seen or consider themselves beautiful tend to be more anti-egalitarian and rightwing,” Niclas Berggren, one of the three co-authors of the study, told AFP Wednesday.

[snip]

Explaining the findings, he said that globally, “the left perhaps traditionally has used a more rational approach.

The right meanwhile, “has been more conscious of the importance of looks,” he said, pointing to the examples of Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin in the United States.

How does a study about looks provide any clue to the left's supposed use of a "more rational approach"? Seems to me this is as unscientific and emotional as you can get -- evidence supports a conclusion against your buddies, your cohort, so you immediately make stuff up with no evidence behind it to say "but my friends are better in a ll other ways."

"Science." I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Bookworm offers a just-as-scientific explanation:

I’d like to offer a different theory, one that is equally unsupported by fact, but that makes a great deal more sense. My theory is that unattractive people are often angry, unhappy people. They feel as if the world has treated them unfairly. They resent other people for having better looks and, with those better looks, having better luck in life. (As the same article points out, attractive people tend to be more successful.)

Another possibility is that, as Wisconsin has made blindingly clear, that one party is the Party of Government and the other party is the party of those not in government.

Those in the Party of Government prosper by networking with bureaucrats and essentially winning a secret poll of insiders with a vested interest in seeing the Party of Government prosper-- that is, the Party of Government chooses its nominees based less on public acclaim and more in insider-agreements, with unions and bureaucrats, which are never made public. The Party of Government therefore avoids genuine democratic primaries in favor of primaries substantially pre-determined or fixed by secret agreements and arrangements.

The Party of Outsiders, on the other hand, is forced to make a more traditional, transparent, and, ultimately, populist appeal, and looks are in such a traditional appeal more important. Because, unlike the case as with the Party of Government, the unions and bureaucracies haven't made decisions based on information and promises withheld from the government, but must make their appeal more transparently -- this is who I am, this is what I stand for, and, unavoidably, this is what I look like.

Or forget that. I think this dink was right -- this study showing left-wingers are ugly must prove, somehow, they are also rational. Because we all know that being unlovely and unloved promotes rationality and centeredness.

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

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