Friday - April 08, 2011

do men who cry in public unman themselves? if not, they still look stupid.

And it isn’t just the Brits nor is it restricted by race or class or political party.

Maybe daytime TV had a hand in it. But do any of you guys also cringe when you see a guy start to blubber on national TV? 
Oh right. They’re only getting in touch with the softer side.

Well stop it fools.  It’s damned embarrassing to witness. Especially as the lady suggests, when it’s from ppl who are supposed to be leaders.
Remember Trent Lott?  Jeesh.  Grovelling and doing a mia culpa when in fact he didn’t have to.

The guy I admire most even if he did become a loony tune in old age and was ill, was Howard Hughes.  Do any of you folks remember that wonderful scene when he walked out on those stuffed shirt, self important , pretentious bags of gas called congress?  Or was it a senate hearing?  Doesn’t matter.  He got fed up with their harping and walked out.  I admired him for that.  And it was a senate hearing.

This isn’t that exact clip but it does show how he answered those jerks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDkTkpoyfL0
Sorry. Embed not possible.

Below has been edited for space. Link to whole is below.

A blubbing politician? It’s enough to make you weep

By Cristina Odone

I came across an expression the other day that made me sit up in surprise: “unmanned by tears”. It sounded quaint enough to nestle in a Barbara Cartland romance, cheek to jowl with one of her preposterous, cleft-chinned, hard-but-gentle heroes.

No wonder the phrase has been dropped from our everyday lexicon: how could it survive the legions of men who dissolve in tears in public? From footballer John Terry, who wept in front of millions of viewers when Chelsea lost a Champions League final, to the line-up of macho actors – Daniel Craig and Willem Dafoe among them – that artist Sam Taylor Wood photographed breaking down, even the toughest toughs these days are in touch with their emotional side.

Now the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has admitted that he, too, is a blubbing big boy, who “cries regularly to music” in the evenings. He confessed in an interview this week that he is wounded by the brickbats and jeers that he receives from the electorate.

Years of being the Prince Charming of a party that never dreamed of attaining power did not prepare Clegg for the cruelty of life at the top.
But he is at the top. And from where many of us stand, that’s a pretty good place to be. The son of a millionaire banker, educated at Westminster and Cambridge, Nick Clegg had a head-start in the race to the top. His beautiful wife is a highly paid lawyer, his children appear healthy and are well-educated (soon, it would seem, in faith schools) and his parents and in-laws wealthy enough to take care of themselves in their sunset years.
A powerful man’s tears too often reek of self-pity, not raw honesty. They play badly with the public, and can destroy a political career.

This may be an emotionally candid era, but the unofficial contract between public and politicians is very clear. Voters want a tower of strength, not soppy, soft-toy empathy, from their elected representatives, particularly at a time when millions are worried about finding a job, or simply keeping one, and their incomes being squeezed dry.

Their ideal is still Churchillian: the confident, unyielding statesman who leads the troops into battle (figuratively as well as literally), a brandy bottle rather than a hanky at the ready. A millionaire martyr moaning about name-calling sounds like a spoilt boy indulging in self-pity.

The much-derided confessional culture has given rise to freak shows on daytime telly, but it has also delivered men from the need to preserve the stiff upper lip.

Political strategists traditionally portray women as more likely to cast a sympathy vote. In fact, we are just as impatient with a weeping politico as men are. This may explain why so few female politicians ever blub in public.
Women politicians know better than to play the sympathy card: one tearful outburst and the whole Cabinet will mock the “hormonal Missus”.

read all here

Posted by peiper     on 04/08/2011 at 09:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous • UK •  
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