National Review has delivered unto us a puckishly paleoconservative cover story with a very Redditesque headline: “Like a Boss.” Which is perhaps appropriate, in that the story that goes with the headline uses the faux logic of evolutionary psychology (always popular on Reddit) in order to argue that Romney, a true alpha male, should be getting something like 100% of the female vote rather than trailing Obama by ten percent in this rather important demographic.
The article, by Kevin D. Williamson — no, not the Dawson’s Creek dude — starts off terrible:
What do women want? The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse.
And it only gets worse from there.
The Demi Moore–Ashton Kutcher model is an exception — the only 40-year-old woman Jack Nicholson has ever seen naked is Kathy Bates in that horrific hot-tub scene. Age is cruel to women, and subordination is cruel to men.
So, yeah. As Williamson evidently figures it, Romney oozes status, so therefore women should adore him. No, really.
You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched.
Heck, even his sperm is macho:
It is a curious scientific fact … that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters.
But Obama, meanwhile, has got the sperm of a girly man:
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
With so much going for him, Williamson wonders, why isn’t Romney doing better with the ladies?
From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote.
Because all women are inherently golddiggers. It’s SCIENCE!
Given that we are no longer roaming the veldt for the most part, money is a reasonable stand-in for social status. Romney’s net worth is more than that of the last eight U.S. presidents combined. He set up a trust for his grandkids and kicked in about seven times Barack Obama’s net worth, which at $11.8 million is not inconsiderable but probably less than Romney’s tax bill in a good year. If he hadn’t given away so much money to his church, charities, and grandkids, Mitt Romney would have more money than Jay-Z.
He’s big pimpin, yo!
So why aren’t the ladies lining up for him?
Well, Williamson suggests that despite his wealth, Romney doesn’t act as rich as he really is. Indeed, he’s been known to ride coach on airlines! Williamson urges Romney to fully embrace his inner pimp, because “Americans love rich people.”
Still, despite Romney’s failure to live as large as he could, given the amount of money he’s got in the bank, Williamson still thinks he’s pretty darn alpha:
Look at his fat stacks. Look at that mess of sons and grandchildren. Look at a picture of Ann Romney on her wedding day and that cocky smirk on his face. What exactly has Mitt Romney got to be insecure about?
A lot, really. Do you actually follow the news? If Americans – particularly American women — love rich guy alphas so much, there’s not a lot of evidence of this in the current presidential race. Heck, every time Romney acts like the rich person he is — you may recall his comments about his good buddies the NASCAR team owners — he becomes the butt of jokes.
Could it be that people don’t actually act the way that the cavemen and/or animals in evolutionary psychology “just-do stories” do? That, perhaps, those stories are bullshit?
Indeed, Williamson’s story is such an effective rebuttal of evo-psych nonsense, it’s hard not to wonder if National Review has just trolled itself. Or us.
I’m pretty sure we aren’t voting on who gets to be Alpha Male. We’re voting on who gets to be president.
Also, I’m told most women consider it a turn off to look into their partners cold, soulless eyes and see nothing inside but the reflections of their own past failures. So there’s that.
When I saw him I just thought he looked like a slightly older version of Kirk Cameron.
Same here. Even without his hideous politics, I wouldn’t think of him as good-looking. I don’t know many US politicians but of those I do, the only one I think is a looker is the President. He’s very appealing – disappointing politically, but appealing nonetheless (and even more so given the opposition, ugh …)
LMAO 😀
I wish I had heard about the vagina strike sooner. I’ve been giving it up to my husband all week.
Sociopaths tend to be rather unpleasant sex partners.
Blockquote success! Yessssss!
@lowquacks, kitteh
I have notoriously bizarre taste in men. My two dream men are Johnny Weir and Ralph Fiennes.
From The Egoist:
There you are. Mitt Romney lacks the leg. His ever-fattening stacks of cash only work to underline that lack; one always has the feeling that they’re a substitute for something else which has gone missing, and when one reads a harangue like this, one is sure of it. About Mitt Romney’s want of a clever tongue one need not speak.
Mitt Romney’s got money? Great for Mitt Romney. But even if one were to be moved to transports over the cash itself it wouldn’t necessarily follow that one would like or trust the man attached to it. I repeat: so heavy an investment in one aspect of a man’s life provokes the suspicion that there may be deficits in the others.
“…and somehow an attack of the Romney clones would still be better than the Star Wars prequels.”
100 million Mitt Romneys vs. 100 million Jango Fetts?
@aworldanonymous
Why the “ponies” substitution in your quote of me? I thought I’d made an amusing typo when I read that, but looking up the original read “people”?
My mother and I have an ongoing joke about how I wouldn’t sleep with Paul Ryan for anything, but I happily would put him in ponyboy gear and prance him around the floor of the House with a riding crop just for lulz.
Mitt Romney wouldn’t even get that much attention from me. He’s just another incarnation of my biological father, whom I find abhorrent for his religious, political, social, and personal views. Misogynist, racist, classist, imperialist, and a gullible idiot of the first degree.
For the record, I don’t find Barack Obama attractive either. He’s more charismatic by leaps and bounds, but it disguises a level of deceit I never hoped to see in a President.
@lowquacks
They probably have Ponify, which changes words to pony words, men to stallions, women to mares, anybody to anypony etc. It’s quite comprehensive.
I had it for a while but I took it off because it made my reading porn very… disturbing. (And no, I am not going to masturbate using Internet Explorer.)
@(that’s no) whataboutthemoonz
I don’t have anything to say, I just wanted to make that joke.
Re:Paul Ryan, I guess he sometimes has a sort of a less hairy Let-It-Be-Era-Paul-McCartney prettiness when not in the middle of a self-satisfied scowl, but I’m not keen on the indistinct eyebrows or the rock-solid 12-year-old’s hair.
He’s also a bit gym-ratty looking, which I’m not into but I understand quite a few people are.
Hmm, Paul Ryan is not a head-turner in my book. I did a google image search on him and one picture made him look OK, but he’s got this kind of douchy haircut. Maybe if his hair was shorter, like Daniel Craig wears his hair. And if he wasn’t a fucking asshole politician with abhorrent views.
Anyway Obama is way cuter.
When I saw him I just thought he looked like a slightly older version of Kirk Cameron.
It’s a conspiracy! All pale, blue-eyed, dark-haired white dudes become neo-conservatives! We need confirmation…does anyone know Zach Braff’s politics?
Not cuter than Daniel Craig though.
I guess I just kinda wish there were more guys around who looked like Daniel Craig.
NR needs to realize that Obama is practically these women’s husband and father. He is in favour of replacing men with government spending. Of course women are going to vote for him when he promises them all kinds of health care giveaways, laws favouring women in hiring, and abortion on demand.
@lowquacks, creativewritingstudent
Yeah, I do have ponify, I was bored one day, and I’ve never gotten annoyed enough with it to get rid of it.r
I guess I just kinda wish there were more guys around who looked like Daniel Craig.
Now, if he were cloned 100 million times, then the rest of the men in the US really would be in trouble.
Hmm, Gary Johnson looks like Andy Warhol given a fake tan and dressed as a vaguely skeezy suburban businessman uncle, Paul Ryan’s basically a hypermasculinised Paul McCartney with a bit of a Campus Liberals look to him (think Campus Republicans over in the US, I guess? Our Liberal party aren’t at all), Obama’s got a cute-nerd thing going but has an odd chin and a harsh crop (I get that his teenage afro would be political suicide, but does look good), Joe Biden’s all affable and accessible-looking but very plain, Jim Gray definitely has an awful haircut and a movie-villain air… if we’re talking current US pres/VP candidates without taking policies into account, Mitt’s hottest.
Notice that that doesn’t make me think he’s some affable alpha I’d love to have leading the US, but maybe that’s because I’m a dude and don’t have a ladybrain.
@Katz
As a hint, the “dark-haired” is a red herring. Everything else you’ve listed is relevant.
@rg
I’m the one who did that math fail and I’m a guy, the fact that you assumed it was a “chick” says a lot about you.
So, according to this Williamson person, is it only women that are supposed to be so biologically programmed that they vote against their own interests in order to “get” (somehow) the guy that makes them hot and bothered? Or will we see a companion piece about how evo-psych says men should all vote for the manly man with the manly man sperm?
Come to think of it, in the PUA/MRA bastardized version of evo-psych, it’s really only women who are ruled by their instincts, isn’t it?
OK, no, I refuse to concede that the 65-year-old is the handsomest guy in the election.
@Katz
It’s not as if the competition are much younger or anything.
The men supposedly vote for the men they want to have a beer with. Remember that from 2000. The fact that W was on the wagon appeared to have slipped the reporters mindz.