I’ve expressed my disappointment that the Democratic primaries haven’t thrown up a more demographically electable antiwar candidate (here and here). I’ve been accused of over-emphasizing demographics but, judging by Michael Medved’s “The Blue-Eyed Rule,” the opposite may be true:
“It turns out that in all of U.S. history, only five presidents had brown eyes – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, LBJ and Nixon. …
“[T]wo of our three presidents who faced serious impeachment proceedings (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) were among our brown-eyed minority. The other three brownies (John Quincy Adams, Chester A. Arthur, and Lyndon Johnson) all hoped to win an additional term as president but failed to do, falling victim to bitter political critics and rivals.
“The general incidence of blue eyes in the population is about 16% today. In 1950, it was estimated at 30%; in 1900, 50%. …
“[O]ur population almost certainly never featured the 89% blue-eyed incidence of all our presidents. …”
lol wut
Having cogitated upon this matter briefly, this is all my brain can produce.
You have caught on to the innate stupidity of the “blue-eyed rule,” which is about as useful as the “white man rule.”
Don’t you make my brown eyes blue.
A corollary to the rule: get blue contact lenses to improve your odds at becoming president.
…Michael Medved?
This is the same Michael Medved who wrote this smear on Ron Paul last year:
http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/77711671-de32-47da-a721-8f606d586ad0
“Dear Congressman Paul:
Your Presidential campaign has drawn the enthusiastic support of an imposing collection of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 ‘Truthers’ and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists….”
Do we need to know anything else about Medved?
And maybe now we know something about Sam Koritz?
The messenger Medved may be a jerk, but his message of historical blue-eyed presidents, and what happened to the handful of brown-eyes, is illuminating. Thank you for sharing this study. None are female, either.
Citing Mike Medved can only achieve the goal of demolishing your credibility.
Medved’s rabid revue of DePalma’s “Redacted” here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP6_Dm9gLzU
Well worth close analysis and study as almost the definitive Neo-Con typology.
Interestingly enough, like Ledeen’s intersection with Macchiavelli, Medved’s contact with the film he reviews seems at best casual.
It is not even clear that the troops portrayed are supposed to be Marines, and in the event were Army.
The film is a small masterpiece, and the first attempt in traditional film to transcend the medium in a new direction.
“…’First he kicked his American flag pin to the curb. Now Barack Obama has a new round of patriotism problems. Wait until you hear what the White House hopeful didn’t do during the singing of the national anthem,’ said Steve Doocy, co-host of ‘Fox and Friends’ on the Fox News Channel.
‘He felt it OK to come out of the closet as the domestic insurgent he is,’ former radio host Mark Williams said on Fox. First he kicked his American flag pin to the curb. ‘Wait until you hear what the White House hopeful didn’t do during the singing of the national anthem,’ said Steve Doocy, co-host of ‘Fox and Friends’ on the Fox News Channel….”
[Pickler AP February 24, 2008]
Domestic insurgent? This could be contagious.
Fox–is that the one owned by Murdoch, the fellow who was once an Australian patriot?
Eugene,
“Murdoch” was no Australian patriot. He was and still is a money hungry multi billionaire. You are welcome to him over there. The only reason he became a US citizen was to increase his vast media empire. Not very patriotic was it .
Just another stupid,rich bastard who wants to rule the world!
Maybe,we are the stupid ones who allowed such people to control so much!
“This film is an atrocity”
[Michael Medved re: DePalma’s Redacted]
Not exactly correct on Chet Arthur. Arthur discovered he had Bright’s disease and did little to influence his bid for a second term. Thomas Reeves goes into it a good deal in his excellent “Gentleman Boss” and shows how Arthur basically undermined his own campaign by doing nothing with patronage and shutting out his young and inexperienced campaign team, leaving the “big guns” of his administration out of the loop.
Arthur’s Civil Service examinations were patterned on the British which in turn derived from the Chinese model.
Chinese Imperial model, to be precise.
Yes, and they were taller, more symmetrical in their facial features, all had larger than average penis size, they all emitted pheremones favorable to being elected, etc.
THRRRRT!!!
Just wondering – does Sam Koritz habitually consult Michale Medved’s opinions — and trust his research and analysis — concerning the issues of the day?
If so, is this not a curious habit of mind in a staffer working for antiwar.com?
I think Medved just comes up with this drivel because he hopes for the self-fulfilling prophecy of a McCain victory. I could see Obama running into some racial issues, but blue eyes, good grief. It’s a meaningless correlation.
Obama has blue balls.
Woo-eee. Is this what it’s come to? Last week you crunched some demographics numbers to reveal the next president would be… Clutch Cargo… or somebody…
This week, it’s eyeballs. What next? We divine the outcome in November by spattering some chicken blood and clog-dancing around a crock pot? Or maybe pick through pigeon entrails?
The real story of this election is how out of touch the mainstream media has become with the American public. Last fall, we were presented with the certain coronations of Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani. That prophecy hit the fan smartly.
Our estrangement with the establishment media indicates its irrelevance. The media simply can’t tell the peasantry what to think anymore. We want change – not the same old tired line.
“Out of touch” may be the wrong word, since the mainstream media’s goal from the getgo was to engineer the result.
But this involved a complex of problems that required a two-pronged strategy.
One prong was positive–to market the winners. As you say, Giuliani and Clinton.
The other was negative–to have the audience ignore, not the other candidates, but issues such as the high price of oil, the catastrophe in Iraq, the collapse of real estate and credit, the fall in the dollar, and so forth.
The very fact that the mainstream has been covering up the negative, and trying to defuse its significance when it had to be reported at all, shows they were not out of touch at all.
In fact, the economy has been in recession for at least three years, and recession is rather a mild characterization of where it is headed.
Oil was $29 a barrel in 2002. It is now hovering around $98-100.
This is a direct consequence of the war in Iraq, and has immediate consequences in the economy, including higher food and fuel prices, which in turn put the squeeze on those laboring to keep up with mortgages and other credit payments.
The collapse of sub-prime was just the canary in the mine shaft.
One sign of the mainstream’s problem was a short article about a year ago discussing high gasoline prices.
“High Gas Prices May Have Upside”, read the title. the article went on to detail all the health benefits high gas prices entailed, including walking and bicycling.
It did not mention higher food prices, but it had much to say about Americans being overweight.
Arbeit macht frei….
Not too long ago a German visitor to the USA told me that blue-eyed people were superior. Could it be that this notion might play into one’s voting decisions? Just asking.
Eye-color, like skin color, is strictly a function of the strength of the sun where one’s progenitors may have spent, say, the last ten thousand years.
Want to see some real blond, blue-eyed Arya? Try Kurdistan or Iran.
Race is largely a bad joke, especially based on skin color.
Talking about “Anglo-Saxons” or the “British race” merely shows utter ignorance, or utter lack of scruple.
But as Mencken saw in his little essay on Anglo-Saxons, the chosen of the chosen in the US, who are the cream of the White Racists, striding blue-eyed and barefoot through them thar hills and toting shotguns and their Hebrew Bible really do take the cake for belly laughs.
Consult the Venerable Bede.
Has anyone verified this. Sounds flimsy. Please keep in mind, 99 % of voters wont be able to identify a candidate’s eye color.
Earlier I wrote:
“Just wondering: does Sam Koritz habitually consult Michale Medved’s opinions — and trust his research and analysis — concerning the issues of the day?
“If so, is this not a curious habit of mind in a staffer working for antiwar.com?”
Bearing that in mind, let us further consider that this person is the gatekeeper for the antiwar.com “Letters” page.
You were so impressed with your original comment that you felt the need for a reprise? Hmm. For the record, Sam didn’t endorse any of Medved’s positions; he simply passed along a statistic from one of Medved’s columns. Get a life.
Michael Medved’s views are so extreme and hateful, and so at variance with antiwar.com’s mission, that I think alarm is due on finding that your letters editor happens to read Medved for enlightenment.
I guess things haven’t reached the socially required minimum level of obviousness which would allow one to point something like this out, without being insulted in response.
If you look at Sam Koritz’s website (samkoritz.com), under books, you will notice a predilection for books that explore whether Jeffersonian democracy is really just a sham surface pantomime, whereas what is really going on is a sociobiologically-driven process. The titles reek of cynicism with regard to enlightenment ideals, such as those espoused by our nation’s dunder-headed founders — titles like “Darwinian Politics” and “The Myth of the Rational Voter”. He has a marked preference for reading tomes that expound on the idea that the existence of even a possibility of honest political national discourse is a fairy tale believed only by the little people, not the elites who actually run things — a viewpoint that has much in common with that of Leo Strauss and his evil minions.
It’s no wonder that Koritz picked up this neat “blue eyes” trick, and it’s also no wonder that he found it while perusing the works of Michael Medved.
Or rather, OH SH-