PALIN AND MADONNA: THE LEAST SEXY SEX SYMBOLS EVER?

Over the weekend, my wife and I went to a diner where we've eaten often enough to be familiar to the proprietor. This time, as we were leaving, he began asking us if we'd watched the vice presidential debate. When we told him we had -- I should note that we've never told him anything about our political beliefs -- he said, "You know, I don't know anything about her politics, but that Sarah Palin, she's ... hot. More than McCain's wife. More than Mrs. Obama -- she's a little scary. Sarah Palin? She's very good looking. She's ... approachable."

I really don't get this.

I don't think I would get it if I agreed with Sarah Palin's politics. I know Palin inspires a lot of male lust (go here, if you dare, to read a drooling Palin article by George Gurley, the right-wing New York Observer columnist who elicited Ann Coulter's notorious quote about Timothy McVeigh and the New York Times building), but I can't even imagine feeling anything of the sort when I see her.

Even Palin critics seem to take it as a given that she's a knockout -- I don't know of anyone who's questioned that. However, I did read something yesterday that captured how I feel about Palin -- but it wasn't written about Palin; it was written about Madonna. It was this paragraph in a New York Times review by Jon Pareles of the current Madonna tour:

Has there ever been a colder pop sex symbol? For all the invitations in her lyrics, Madonna has always projected more calculation and industriousness than affection. She works; her audience looks and pays, becoming another conquest.

Pareles isn't the first person to say something like this about Madonna. Back in 1990, Luc Sante wrote a think piece about her for The New Republic -- yes, kids, back in the Reagan-Bush era people actually wrote think pieces about Madonna -- that said this:

...If truth be told, Madonna herself does not precisely exude sexuality. What she exudes is more like will, iron self-discipline, and, of course, punctuality, that courtesy of monarchs. In her "Ciao, Italia" video, decked out in various gymnastic outfits and body-pumping to the screams of tens of thousands in a soccer stadium in Turin, Madonna looks perfectly able to make the trains run on time.

...The reason that Madonna does not possess much intrinsic sexual appeal ... is that she lacks any trace of vulnerability, a quality that, it should be noted, is essential to the charms of both sexes. Pout and pant and writhe though she might, Madonna is not sexually convincing because her eyes do not register. They are too busy watching the door....

I feel I've seen Madonna be vulnerable, or at least briefly unguarded, once or twice over the years -- but, for all her sloppy syntax and phony gee-whizziness, Palin never seems that way. There were a couple of times, years ago, when I saw Madonna be unguarded while wrapping an interviewer around her finger -- I felt I saw a fleeting look in her eyes that said, I'm having fun doing this. For a moment she seemed like a human being, not an entertainment/provocation machine. I wouldn't use the word "approachable," but I think she was conveying something vaguely like what the diner proprietor thinks he saw (and I think he didn't see) in Palin.

I've described some of Palin's nasty talk on the stump as "gleeful," but I think that was the wrong word. Her smile of satisfaction when an attack draws applause seems to be saying, Good, that worked. I'm that much closer to ruling the world. That's the message I get from most of what Madonna does, but, as I say, on rare occasions she actually seems to be enjoying herself. Palin just seems pleased with herself -- it's different. It's a cold, cold feeling, and I don't see anything attractive or sexy about it.