* A CPAC or three or so ago [George Will] was the keynote speaker and I wound up in his immediate vicinity before the dinner plates came out. What struck me, aside from his tall height, is how…luminescent the guy is. First of all he must have been wearing makeup; second the guy’s hair shimmers like gold, it really does. Anyways he carries himself with the mien of, well, of George F. Will, in the midst of a conservative pilgrimage to his Nation’s Capital. Though you might have been expecting more of a sheer nerd.
But he’s a Big Man, no doubt.
So though Steve’s distinctions are fun to notice, these ideas, they’re all relative. George Will will not so much look like the big man if and when they induct him into the baseball hall of fame, would be my intuition.
* Ah yes the evolution of George F. Will is a book in itself. I mean Statecraft as Soulcraft to the Cato Institute’s favorite columnist; he must have some heck of a memoir in store. I started out an avid reader of his columns, and as he once said of Murray Kempton, the finest practitioner of the columnist’s craft would be Dr. Will himself in my book. But clearly, from his last column on Trump, his style has, well, deteriorated by taking over. Something like what happened to Hemingway:
“His subject had become Ernest Hemingway and he had to keep developing the character. “How do you like it now, gentleman?” was the false-jocose line Lillian Ross heard him say, over and over, about his role in some uninteresting goings-on. The famous Style became performance, began eyeing itself, imitating itself. It developed formulae: flat nouns, short clauses linked by “and.” The day came when he could live with none of this any longer.” -Hugh Kenner
Change that last he to we and you have me. I no longer read George F. Will, though I remember when I thought I always would.
* Will is stuck in the rip current that mainstream conservatives found themselves in after Reagan. They thought that they had successfully carried out a successful revanchist campaign that cemented their place on the political landscape. Meanwhile, the counter-culture had embedded itself in the major cultural institutions and thereafter gained near absolute hegemony in news media, entertainment media, the academy. From there, they metastasized to gain appointments on the boards of museums, professional associations, and so forth – any institution not explicitly “conservative” (and later, even those that are).
Being conservative politically but also temperamentally – of great importance to him both being and being perceived as cultured and erudite – respectability is a sine qua non. And since the entire greater culture is dominated by Leftists and social insurgents they can confer or deny respectability depending upon one’s stated beliefs and behaviors. And so a man who was no doubt scandalized by Bill Haley and the Comets now advocates for the Republican Party to repudiate its position on State solemnized sodomy. He does this, but of course just a moment or two too late for a grant of full respectability – it’s more like a conditional pardon that is granted to him. And so he’s forever struggling to make headway to shore against a prodigious current but being pushed further to sea with every stroke.
So, where is the man? Where is George Will? What has he conserved with all of his gum flapping and spilled ink? What has he served to be other than the agent who consolidates the Left’s radical change and puts further opposition beyond the pale of respectability? Who is he but an older, stodgier, fussier version of any of his interlocutors from twenty five years ago?
In his mind’s eye, he would no doubt identify himself as Thomas More, but we can all see he’s Norfolk, mistaking expediency for “proportion” and propriety:
Of course, even after acceding to the King Norfolk is later sentenced to death but spared only due to the former’s death. And likewise Will had an invitation to speak at a college campus rescinded for failing to accept the paradigm of spectral evidence and denial-as-evidence-of-guilt in the recent campus rape hysteria. They deny him even the respectability for which he’d sell his eternal soul.
* Due to their intellect and methodical nature, a lot of nerds can learn the “big man” type techniques and become very good at them. There are a lot of introvert salespeople who have become very good at their craft because they are students of the game. Public speaking is a skill that can be learned. Interacting with the opposite sex successfully is a skill that can be learned.
Public speaking is something that white guys can excel at in their typical way of planning, kind of like pre-planned dance routines as opposed to impromptu African style dancing. Being able to think quickly on the feet and adapt verbally (like Trump does so well) in a debate is something I think you are mostly born with, though practice does make one better at it. And that is a very helpful “big man” technique.
* I noticed the same thing in high school, college and 20s with certain guys who were, shall we say, good with the ladies. Even if they were fairly masculine in general, they definitely had a feminine side. It’s what let them playfully go back and forth with the ladies.
I tended to do reasonably with women when I treated everything as a game, but I could only maintain that persona for so long, since, in my heart, it wasn’t. But for those “players,” it wasn’t an act. They really liked the game – and so did the women.
* George Will hasn’t been George Will since his first marriage broke down in dramatic fashion (his clothes on the lawn, etc.). All of his sensible social-conservative instincts also went out the window–his religious faith too, I gather. Now, according to George, sodomy and bardashery are akin to left-handedness.
* Most of the men I have known who are successful with women are ultimately quite boring to me as they tend not to be serious.
* Jerry: “No, Elaine and I we’re just discussing whether I could admit a man is attractive.”
Kramer: “Hmm! Oh! Yeah. I’ll tell you who is an attractive man; George Will.”
Jerry: “Really!”
Kramer: “Yeah! He has clean looks, scrubbed and shampooed and….”
Elaine: “He’s smart….”
Kramer: “No, no I don’t find him all that bright.”