February 2, 2006

"Feingold cuts an attractive figure, natty and trim ('I'm a swimmer') with vulpine good looks."

Vogue magazine likes Senator Russ Feingold. He's the "man of the moment."
The article flits between policy (Feingold's votes against the Patriot Act and support of campaign finance reform) to his reputation as a "goo goo," Beltway slang for goody-goody. Bradley Whitford (the Madison native who plays Josh on "West Wing") is quoted: "I've never felt that Russ is acting, which as an actor is something I appreciate." Whitford's wife, actress Jane Kaczmarek, calls Feingold "very sexy." Apparently the author agrees, writing: "In person, Feingold cuts an attractive figure, natty and trim ("I'm a swimmer") with vulpine good looks."
"Vulpine"? How is that a compliment? I guess they think it's a synonym for "foxy."

Here's the word as used in a literary classic:
I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the Fox-bear woman’s vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city byway.
That does make me think of Congress: I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and ordinary to me.

And now we meet the Senator, with his vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its speculative cunning.

10 comments:

Gaius Arbo said...

Could have been worse, he could have been called hirsute.....

Unknown said...

Well, of course, Ann. Feingold has made all the right moves: he's voted “Nay” on the Iraq war, cloture on debate on the Alito confirmation, and the Alito confirmation itself.

And in today's Humpty-Dumpty world “vulpine” means whatever the author thinks it means, no more, no less.

Steve Barton said...

Ha! (Ann, thanks for the laugh)

JesusIsJustAlrightWithMe said...

"I'm a swimmer."

I think I saw Feingold swimming at a health club in Middleton around X-Mas. I wasn't sure at the time but If that's how he describes himself and he has a house in Middleton (I think) maybe it was him.

For the record, he sucks at swimming.

The Exalted said...

maybe the good senator is one of the dread man-animal hybrids that will soon be rounded up and disappeared

Ruth Anne Adams said...

So Feingold is a Goo Goo Doll.

Roger Sweeny said...

I always thought that "goo-goo" in this context meant "good government."

Like, "The League of Women Voters is a goo-goo organization."

Freeman Hunt said...

I find the goo-goo thing confusing. What does it mean to be a goody-goody politician?

It makes me picture a bunch politicians looking smutty and drunk with Feingold sitting in the middle of them looking prim.

Unknown said...

The latest Dem annointed "a rock star!" like Obama, who is decidely not a rock star.

This too shall pass.

SarahWeddington said...

Although Feingold seems like an honest guy, and more a of straight shooter than Kerry or Gore, I don't think he has any real shot of winning the WH given the current political climate and especially the WOT and all our problems in the Middle East. If his name was Russ Allen or Russ Warner, he'd have a much better shot.

I don't think this should be the case, but reality is what it is. If Gore has chosen Dick Gephardt or some other Southern Dem as his VP he probably would have won.