And now back to the political talk
I’m officially looking forward to “Kinsey,” a movie inspired by the life of the sex researcher, opening in Seattle. The trailer, which I saw before “Sideways,” made it look surpisingly engaging.
Ebert’s interview with Liam Neeson, who plays Kinsey, and Bill Condon, who wrote and directed the film, seals the deal.
Part of the fallout of the election for me has been to wake me up as to just how…let’s just say confused, America is sexually. That’s easy to be naive about if you grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and have lived there or in Seattle your whole life.
But we’re really censorious. I don’t just mean about gay marriage, think of everything from covered-up tits on statues to heart attacks over a singers uncovered one during the super bowl.
And from the height of “Monicagate” to this day, it’s always seemed to me that what made Republicans maddest is not that Clinton lied about an affair. Nor that he betrayed his marriage vows, or even that he desecrated The Oval Office. No, I think it’s the very fact that we had a President who clearly enjoyed sex, and was found sexually attractive by women, that gave them a full head of steam. That was the sin, that was the crime. And we’re paying for it to this day–the democrats aren’t going to nominate another “stud” like Clinton for at least another generation.
Trouble is, from the seeds of Clinton’s stupidity and lack of self-control also grew at least some of his success as a candidate. He was flirtatious and seductive in ways that had nothing to do with the bedroom and everything to do with the ballot box: As a speaker, as a storyteller, as a shaper of a message for the Democratic party. And in ways that it was flatly impossible to imagine Kerry or Gore being.
Edwards just might have that “sex,” that “Elvis” in him, judging from the one or two more “informal” interviews he did during the campaign. Let’s hope the next four years are good to him.
