My first wife, Judy Wolf, a.k.a. Fang, grew up in a wooded section of Bethany, Connecticut, the oldest of three kids. Her mother, Alice, had been at Smith College, one of the so-called Seven Sisters (prestigious eastern girls’ schools), and had withdrawn, pregnant, under suspicious circumstances. (Gamma rays were suspected.) Fang’s father, Ted, was the youngest of five sons in a prosperous family from upstate New York. His mother had yearned for a daughter her last time around, and, disappointed, can be judged guilty of keeping her youngest son’s hair too long and dressing him in baby dresses, too. Consequently, Ted Wolf had a stronger-than-average need to assert his masculinity. He was a bossy little bully of a man, who ridiculed those who were mild or shrank from hard work. Ted expressed affection—if he felt any—by socking you, much too hard, in the upper arm. His emotional palette was colored by a lifelong need to avoid any appearance of softness, which he feared might be seen as weakness. Ted worked in middle management for Anaconda, the international metals conglomerate.
A little further down their wooded lane lived Roger and Betty Mackenzie—less educated than Fang’s parents, but not less intelligent. Roger ran a small machine-shop, and his wife was the company’s bookkeeper. To that extent, the Mackenzies were working class, while Fang’s folks were middle class, despite which, their lifestyles were identical. Like all good suburbanites in the 1960s (see Updike or Cheever), these folks lubricated their social lives with alcohol. After a beverage or two, baseball and politics came to the fore. Ted Wolf, an Up By Your Own Bootstraps kind of guy, was an unregenerate Republican. The Mackenzies were Democrats. Alice Wolf’s allegiance was to vodka, and she pledged it daily.
Once, after a couple of martinis, Ted began orating about the upcoming presidential contest, Nixon vs. Humphrey, hoping, as usual, to provoke an argument and belittle his adversaries. He began by citing Nixon’s voting record, campaign promises, etc., contrasting them to HuHu’s, and declared that “Only a moron would vote for Hubert Humphrey!” Roger Mackenzie, a large, quiet, confident guy, was way too smart to take the bait. He comfortably endured Ted’s bravado as a St. Bernard might patiently tolerate the yapping of a Chihuahua. Betty had opinions of her own and didn’t shrink from expressing them. Her response: “There’s something in Nixon that gives me the creeps. I do not like his face. The cold, scheming eyes have a life of their own, quite apart from the rest of his face. His resolute brow and the cute ski-jump nose, and that hideous mouth with its unfeeling lips seem both vicious and dishonest, too!”
Ted’s prayer had been answered. “JESUS, Betty,” he fumed, “that’s the most irrational thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t choose political candidates by their looks! You examine their voting records and listen to their campaign speeches. Then you decide.”
“Well,” said Betty, undaunted, “Some people are trustworthy and others aren’t. Believing their promises is just dumb! My intuition tells me that Dick Nixon is a monster and a crook. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
Ted rejoiced in her talk of intuition, a word he mimicked mockingly, as if it were some particularly unsavory form of mucus. But Betty wouldn’t back down. They’d been around this track 500 times, and both seemed to enjoy the fray.
Why am I telling you this, Reader Dear? Because Betty was right! Richard Nixon was scum. Your face proclaims your character. So, don’t ignore your instincts or be led astray by words. In looking at politicos today, some of the faces are worthy of note: John Boehner is a wolf; he’s not a man. McConnell is a toxic turtle, surely not a man. And Ted Cruz—well, there is no name for it. Ted is an intelligent, malignant, extraterrestrial—some sort of virus, I’d surmise. Joe Biden, with his big grin and his calculating eyes, is an insincere man with decent values, while Hillary Clinton could, by her very nature, counteract Global Warming, like an ice cube in a cup of scalding tea.