The entertaining but seldom lucid Maureen Dowd went off her meds again Sunday, taking the side of Brazil’s President Lula in his assertion that the woes of the world, financial and otherwise, have been the doings of those with blue eyes.
Along with the question of why this gets printed, this raises another of rather more import: Why skin color emerged as the critical indice, while eye and hair color never quite made it among the superficial and wholly irrational measures by which prejudiced people tend to put store.
No one knows really if blondes have more fun, but they have certainly been the most envied, in spite of the fact that the world’s most famous beauties have more often been dark.
For every Grace Kelly, there has been an Ava Gardner, an Elizabeth Taylor, a Sophia Loren, an Audrey Hepburn, and a Jackie Onassis, and most of the million-dollar-a-pose supermodels seen hanging on the arms of film stars or moguls haven’t been blond.
Among men, Robert Redford has been the sole major blond heartthrob of the 20th century, though several lately are making a ripple. Most presidents tend to be gray—or at least grizzled—when they finally make it, but, Gerald Ford to one side, blonds seem to have struck out in our most significant national sweepstakes.
Redheads show up well – Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and John Kennedy were all at one time of the russet persuasion – but in most cases, the browns seem to have it. We hail, in most cases, a once brown-haired Chief.
On the other hand, brown eyes don’t seem to be much of a downer, at least not in the annals of song. ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ makes no mention of color (though green is an option), and while the eyes of Texas may always be on you, what they look like is anyone’s guess.
Dowd notes the song ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison, but neglects the light brown eyes of the Jeannie one dreamed of, and the one song that tends to disprove her whole thesis: ‘Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes, I’ll Never Love Blue Eyes Again.’
In politics, though, it’s a whole other story, as the blue tribe comes into its own. Washington’s eyes were blue-gray, as were those of FDR and John Kennedy. There were the ‘steely blues’ of his brother, (to indicate ruthlessness); and from George W. Bush back, there is an unbroken line of cerulean dominance, through Clinton (baby blue), Bush pere, Reagan (dark blue), and Carter (malaise-style blue), back to Ford, who took over from dark-eyed Richard M. Nixon.
The fates of Nixon and fellow brown-eyed boy Lyndon Johnson, who won historical landslides, but departed unloved by their countrymen, weighs on Dowd heavily, as may the sad fate of the dark-eyed Al Gore. She suggests that Mario Cuomo and Colin Powell, who declined to run when urged for the ultimate office, did so because they felt that their dark eyes had turned fortune against them.
She thinks Obama is less our first black, (okay, beige) president than the brown-eyed boy who returned his real tribe to its justified position of dominance. She says she asked Cuomo if he was “leaving the field to ‘the privileged blue-eyed WASPs’” like Dan Quayle and Bush senior, “who felt entitled and never worried about their worthiness,” or their right to run everything. But how does she know what they felt about anything? She doesn’t. She projects her own ideas on them, which is the definition of prejudice. She looks at, but not into, their eyes.
Today, hair color can be changed for $10 or less at your neighborhood drugstore, and eye color can be altered by contacts, but the fact is that unless eyes are unusually striking, few people remember their color at all.
But if typing people by hair or eye color strikes you as ludicrous, then identifying people in terms of skin color is hardly more rational, a theory more and more people embrace every day. But not Lula, and Dowd, to whom the eyes have it. As Crystal Gayle once said it in music, it’s enough to make your brown eyes blue.
Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
