What a frightening creature! And what’s that she’s holding?
I saw this picture yesterday, and had trouble making head or tail of it (sorry) until I saw this morning’s WSJ, and realized, "Oh, that’s what she was holding!"
The most pertinent passage:
"Keep shaking!" auctioneer David Corbin admonished the candidates. "Don’t let it crawl up your arm and bite!"
Here’s what the caption on the Associated Press photo said:
U. S. Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Florida, holds up a possum she purchased at the Wausau Possum Festival, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006, in Wausau, Fla. Harris is a candidate for the U. S. Senate.
Yes, it says she bought it. I wonder what she’s going to do with it. If she plans to eat it, I hope she lets out that belt a little first.
Related Posts
She’s got “man hands”… and that belt doesn’t
appear to be connected to her pants in any way. What’s up with that?
The photo is symbolic of what she did to the American public during the 2000 Florida recount debacle. The possum, representing fairness and justice, was turned into roadkill by Rove, Jeb Bush, and the Supreme Court.
Brad, you’ve got to keep up man. Wonkette’s been on this for a week now. They have the greatest KH coverage on Earth.
File that under animal abuse and I’m not surprised at all that it’s KH. I’ve always thought her a sick opportunist.
What happened to gravitas?
For all of Mr. Warthen’s lengthy discussion of “civil conversation” on web logs, isn’t it ironic that his post today mocks the physical appearance of Republican Congresswoman Katherine Harris?
Not that a little humor isn’t called for . . . but surely his jests (“What a frightening creature! And what’s that she’s holding?”) shatter any remaining traces of “gravitas.”
We can only hope that the liberal State editorial page editor doesn’t “[run] off the serious, thoughtful people who came to the blog hoping for the very thing [he] would like that venue to be — a place to exchange sincere, constructive ideas about the challenges facing South Carolina and the rest of the world.”
Has Lee changed his username?
Heh. It’s posts like this that show just how untrue Brad’s claims to impartiality, unparty etc. etc. really are.
How is it possible to be impartial towards a clown? The bottom line is that they are funny and they make us laugh. How else should KH be portrayed?
I’m barely joking here, but are we sure that’s Katherine Harris? I was more shocked by how her face has changed rather than by her rough handling of a playmate.
I haven’t looked at her full on since the Great Thievery Corporation Days, but it looks as though someone “fixed” her visage as well as she did that election.
Anyone for a remake of Dark Passage…with marsupials?
LexWolf, come on. That’s a funny picture. She’s dangling a possum.
And yeah, I noticed the belt wasn’t attached to her pants or skirt or whatever. I think it’s there, cinching up her waist, so as to emphasize … well, you know — another part of her anatomy.
The problem with partisanship — and the comments above come down on both sides of that phenomenon — is that it makes it hard just to see the humor in the silly things that politicians do.
My own belief is that Bush/Cheney barely, but clearly, won Florida’s electoral votes, and I just sort of vaguely remember that it was Katherine Harris’ bad fortune to be the person who had the job of validating the results at that moment in history. I’m sure you Democrats who obsessed over this more than I did (all I wanted was to know who had won according to the rules in place at the time, and it was eventually clear that was the GOP ticket) can probably tell me all sorts of mean, nasty, ugly things she said and did that made you not like her, but deep down, I think mainly y’all don’t like the way the election turned out, and she makes a good target for frustration, what with being a Republican and all.
Meanwhile, our GOP friends have trouble seeing what is obvious to independents as well as Dems — this woman is unusual looking. That’s not all bad. I’ve always thought she was simultaneously attractive and scary — like a babe vampire from “Dark Shadows” or something.
As the belt emphasizes, she has an hourglass figure. Yes, her face has aged in the last six years, but that makes me wonder all the more what she looked like 20 years before we knew her — probably pretty fine. And while she may have man hands, I suspect that’s just the short focal length of the lens that was used, distorting the foreground.
At the same time, there’s a little Cruella Deville/Evil Lady Torturer sort of thing going on there with her face, and it’s been there a while. Yeah, it’s mean to say things like that about a woman, but it’s there, and if you ask me to analyze the reaction that a lot of people have to her beyond the obvious partisan objections, I would have to say that certain something in her appearance plays a role.
So that’s my serious, sober, unpartyish assessment. I thought the other one was more fun. And there’s nothing wrong with having fun on the blog. Obviously, going by posts I do about movies and such, I mean for folks to have fun on the blog.
I just don’t want people trashing each other.
Brad,
thou doth protesteth too much. I’ll take your claims of innocence seriously when we can see a similar post about Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters, or even the evil witch of NY herself.
In the meantime, most of the things you said about Harris apply at least as well to Pelosi who most likely also used to be quite goodlooking 30 or 40 years ago.
Oh Brad, what I’d really like to see is you holding up a possum like that and trying to keep it from getting too close to you. Post that picture and then let’s have a real comparison about who looks worse.
(Your WSJ link doesn’t work either)
When Katherine Harris strolled into that Florida courtroom and validated the election in that fire engine red dress with the red lipstick and all, she was the epitome of a rouge cherabim sent from heaven. She carried out the justice that was needed then. Then, the librats on the FL Supreme Court tried to overturn the state results, only to be trumped, justifiably, be the Men in Black. Wow, those were exciting times. And KH got the justice ball rolling. Even if she doesn’t make Senator, she will always be the justice queen. Go KH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lex, check out the post concerning Joe Lieberman and the Unparty. The picture of Ned Lamont was pretty unflattering and I suppose a bit humorous. I think it’s time for everyone to lighten up a bit. Heck, Brad’s posted some rather hideous pictures of himself don’t you think?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this blog, it’s that Warthime has the worst taste in women. In no way is KH sexually appealing in that picture. In no way is she even vampire-fetishistically attractive.
Your beer goggles in college must have put those of Ray Charles to shame.
Brad’s posted some rather hideous pictures of himself don’t you think?
Bud, you have a point there. However, that’s precisely why one would think that he would hesitate a little before making fun of a woman in an obviously stressful situation. Instead he piles on gleefully. Guess that’s part of that civility thing, isn’t it?
Hey, Capital A, if you want babes, join the IDF (link courtesy of the Wonkette). This is politics, where both men and women tend to be geeks. This is my world. Look at Joe Lieberman for awhile (just to pick on somebody I like), and all sorts of women start to look good.
LexWolf, thanks for the heads-up. I think I’ve got the WSJ link working now.
And you’re right; it’s hard to look good posing with a possum.
Now let’s see how much pull a bigtime editorial page editor really has: Get us a picture of Nancy Pelosi holding a possum. If you can’t manage that, how about Reese Witherspoon?
Let’s just compare the pic above and the pic of Lamont on the unparty thread.
Honestly, it would be difficult to find any pic of someone holding a possum that wasn’t at least humorous. The very act is laughable. I don’t care whether it was KH in Ken Gacy makeup, John Kerry or Dear Leader. Hell, it might have been even more amusing to see Kerry try to retain his dignity with a struggling possum.
OTH, you had to try pretty hard to find that unflattering pic of Lamont to support your subtext. (Your message coincided nicely with a Republican meme: “Lamont’s just another “wacky Deaniac Dem candidate.”)
By all means, keep up the pretense of impartiality. It’s too threadbare to cover you bias, though.
I just can’t imagine how you would ever think there would be a situation in which John Kerry couldn’t maintain his dignity.
OK, but please work a little on sizing your images, alright?
Sorry; I did that on my home computer — no Photoshop.
Thanks, Brad, for your reply.
I rest my case.
If Kerry is in the role of Mike Teevee, then Bush has to be Veruca Salt.
“He was a bad nut.”
In “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex”, Kerry played the condom!!!!!!
I had to laugh at the picture of KH trying to hold the possum (no graceful way to do it). It brought me back to 1970, when my old friend Dalton Carter started the festival up. BTW, KH is even more a silver spoon kid than Dubya. Her grandaddy was Ben Hill Griffin, for whom The Swamp in Gainesville is named. That was probably the closest she’s ever been to one of those marsupials.