…Sniff…Sniff. Hey, what’s that smell? Ugh, looks like the Speaker of the House has really stepped in it! Oy — and such expensive shoes! And now she’s leaving a circle of foul footprints in the Capitol Rotunda. So, just how much did Nancy Pelosi know about waterboarding, and when did she know it?
“MADAME SPEAKER! Point of inquiry. Why don’t you get a stick, sit on the Capitol steps, and clean off your shoe like the rest of us have to do?”
But what really gets me about Nancy Pelosi are those gargantuan eyes. Or, more specifically, the way they blink. I call it “contact-blink,” suffered by people who’ve never really adjusted to wearing contact lenses. People with contact-blink have eyes that constantly alternate between a startled and sleepy look, punctuated by forceful blinks that resemble neurological facial tics. Saturday Night Live comedian Kristin Wiig has incorporated these ticks in her fine impressions of Ms. Pelosi. The Speaker’s giant brown eyes only serve to exaggerate this trait. But I can’t complain — what’s good for the impressionist is usually good for the caricaturist.
Most people who wear contact lenses don’t suffer from contact-blink. Hillary Clinton, for instance. As anyone who has seen photos of Hillary as a college student knows, Ms. Clinton is extremely nearsighted. Imagine if her big blues were blinking like a crazy person’s? Former SNL castmember Amy Poehler would have to deliver even more caffeinated impressions to capture Hillary’s essence.
But back to the Speaker. I don’t find Nancy Pelosi Pelosi as easy to caricature as Hillary Clinton. Like Angelina Jolie, of whom I wrote about in an earlier blog, the Speaker has extreme facial features. To exaggerate them further, in caricature, means having to perform a balancing act. The dragonfly eyes and Lucille Ball smile dominate her face. The caricaturist has to be careful not to distort them to the point where she would be unrecognizable. Further complicating matters are Pelosi’s smallish, finely sculpted nose (by Mother Nature, not plastic surgeons). Make it too small in comparison to Pelosi’s eyes, and, again, you run into problems with proportion.
Still, bland she ain’t. So I wish Madame Speaker well — at least in the perverse way I think something being “well.” That, whatever Pelosi knew and whenever she new it, she’ll stick around and step in other stinky substances for editorial cartoonists and caricaturists to savor.
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