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Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan said one of his favorite bands is Rage Against The Machine.  The band’s guitarist, Tom Morello, wrote a response to him in Rolling Stone, saying that Ryan’s beliefs are antithetical to what the band believes, and what their lyrics say.  But, Morello notes, Ryan says “he likes Rage’s sound, but not the lyrics.”

I’ve never understood that.  I don’t know much about music, so I just listen to it as background to the lyrics.  If I like the lyrics, I’ll like the song.  If I don’t, I won’t.  That doesn’t mean I don’t care at all about the music, but it’s definitely a secondary element for me.

That said, it’s easy to like music that is ideologically opposite from oneself.  I like a lot of Marty Robbins‘s songs, even though he was a hardcore conservative.  I think Warren Zevon was a conservative as well, but he’s still one of my favorite singer/songwriters ever.

Anyway, Paul Ryan says he likes RATM’s “sound”.  I’ve only heard a few songs by them, and they seem like the sort of thing he would like.  Too much random loud noise and screaming of the lyrics for my taste; makes them hard to understand.  It’s too bad, because the lyrics themselves are pretty good.  If Ryan is just in it for the “sound”, I’d have to say he’s lucky he still has his hearing.

As Morello is winding down his article, he writes:

But Rage’s music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.

I think Morello is making a mistake here, because I suspect that most of the band’s success comes from those same “moshers”.  Morello shouldn’t insult them, even if he is understandably upset that one of them is a candidate for national office despite not listening to the band’s message.

While we’re on the subject, why are so many irrelevant details of Paul Ryan’s life making the news?  First there was the thing about his clothes, now it’s his musical tastes.  People are also excited about his hobby, bow-hunting. (Ugh!) Although at least that’s tangentially related to his policy decisions, because one of his major achievements is lowering taxes on arrow makers.

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The New York Times has a bizarre fluff article about Paul Ryan’s fashion sense.  This isn’t really my area of expertise–he wears dark suits, like every other male politician–but the article does raise a lot of interesting questions about attractiveness and its relevance to politics.

I think that politicians in general are better looking now than they were before the advent of television and high-quality photographs.  You can’t go around looking like  Martin Van Buren and expect to be President anymore.

Martin Van Buren (Image via Wikipedia.)

Admittedly, not everyone in politics nowadays is pin-up material.  Actually, even people like Ryan, Obama, Palin and all the other supposedly attractive pols are just slightly above-average-looking people.  None of them would turn heads on the street.  But by the standards of the political arena, they look like movie stars.  I suspect this is because to be a major figure in politics, you usually have to be fairly old and spend a lot of time sitting around indoors.  This lifestyle isn’t conducive to getting on People magazine’s “Most Beautiful” list.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two consecutive Republican Vice-Presidential nominees have been relatively young and physically fit people.  They know how much looks matter in politics.  The NYT article referenced above makes it sound like only the Republicans do this, however.  Not true.  Why, the Democrats were perhaps the first beneficiaries of the attractiveness bias, in that it provided JFK the critical edge he needed in a close race against the haggard-looking Richard Nixon.

It’s not the same thing as the “charisma” that I write about so much–both Romney and Ryan are good-looking, but not at all charismatic–but it’s related.  And if you can’t get a charismatic politician to run for your side, getting a nice-looking one is probably the next best thing.

It’s been said that “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people”.  Well, now it’s coming to be Hollywood for slightly above-average looking people.  Eventually, political strategists will decide the best thing to do is put forth incredibly telegenic puppet candidates, and having the real nitty-gritty work of running the country done behind the scenes by people who look like Karl Rove or James Carville.  Or maybe that’s already going on.