Ted Cruz now has a beard, and it seems to undo all the upsetting things about his appearance. It looks good. Really. If he runs again, bear in mind we have not had a president with a beard since 1893, when Benjamin Harrison left office. Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, and WH Taft had mustaches subsequent to that.
We have had four bearded presidents, two with sideburns, and 3 with mustaches. Van Buren was the outlier, coming well before the others. Those are great sideburns, BTW. The others occurred from Lincoln through Taft, with only McKinley and Andrew Johnson as interruptions. There were reports that Dewey's mustache cost him votes with women. And to be fair, Nixon's beard apparently grew so fast that he had to shave twice a day, so we at least have had a stubbly president. Bill Clinton a Boomer? Pah. A sellout.
I say it's time. Beards have been fashionable since the 1960s, but unreasoning prejudice has prevented us from electing qualified candidates. There's a glass ceiling. And don't tell me it's sexist to insist on this. I hear that Elizabeth Warren has 1/1024th of a beard. She would need to prove that, of course, but I'm willing to accept that.
When I lived in China in 2000-1, the Chinese folks I knew took to calling me "Big Beard." Although the word for 'beard' has connotations; it refers to a tribe of barbarians who used to live in the west of China long ago, who were likely to wear beards compared to the Han Chinese. So the name really means "Big Western Barbarian (with a beard)."
ReplyDeleteIt was so accurate and fine a name that I had it engraved on a chop, which I still use sometimes to sign things in the old Chinese fashion.
I shaved the thing except for the mustache when I was in Iraq from 2007-9, but I've since regrown it. Currently it's about a foot long, braided.
大 鬍 鬚, for your Chinese-language readers.
ReplyDeleteAfter five pairs of baby hands yanking on handfuls of beard, I no longer wear mutton chops or mustache.
ReplyDeleteIt does look pretty good on Cruz. There's something so odd about his face, especially the set of his mouth and the quizzical or aggrieved look around his eyebrows. I love the guy, but he has almost no charisma. I seem fated to like politicians like that, Scott Walker being another example.
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