Sunday, December 05, 2004

Althouse On Pelosi

Ann Althouse has some observations about Nancy Pelosi.

Excerpt in full:
Why I can't watch Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi is on Fox News Sunday this morning, and I'm just fast-forwarding through the whole thing. It's nothing she's saying. I'm not even going to wait to hear what she says. It's that crazily overlifted face. The eyebrows are halfway up the forehead, and the eyes are in the permanently over-opened position. (Is this the same face lift people were commenting on back in January, or has she had the facial flesh rolled up a few more notches?)

She looks perpetually surprised and startled. Just looking at her, I find myself raising my own eyebrows and opening my eyes too wide. How can a person who needs to be a good communicator subvert the expressive power of her own face? It's one thing to keep an impassive facial expression to avoid getting wrinkles, especially if you're only resisting frowning and scowling. But it's quite another to have your face surgically adjusted into what looks like a very emotional expression that never goes away. You can never get back to an expressionless face and you can never show a true emotion again. Whoever looks at you feels a sense of alarm, either because they are simply reacting to the expression they see on your face as if it were a real, human expression, or because they are horrified, thinking about what you actually did to get your face to look like that.

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