Talk about res ipsa loquitur.
Another title I considered for this post: “Now THAT’S a comb-over!”
I know that it is wrong to take an instant dislike to someone because of his or her appearance. You can’t judge a book by its cover, after all, it is what’s inside that matters, and so on. A dear friend and theater world associate died this year, and he was a odd-looking, gay, neurodivergent costume designer who presented himself in public so bizarrely at times that it boggled my mind. He was also as kind a human being as you could find in a lifetime of searching.
But Kolby, Kolby, Kolby...the fussy mustache? The prissy smile? That hair? I find myself asking, “What are the chances that this guy is even barely tolerable? What message is he sending with all of this? Why is he sending that message?
Related questions include: How serious can Democrats be about attracting support from young men if they promote their embrace of this guy? Does the whole party reject the premise of the Cognitive Dissonance Scale? If he’s a secret political genius or something, shouldn’t they hid him in bunker or have him wear a mask like Mexican wrestlers?
Would you let someone who looked like this date your daughter? Your son? Would you trust him to babysit?
I’ll give Dana the last word…
Ethics Alarms 
Come on, Jack, he’s fabulous. He knows it and he shows it, and if you don’t know it, you’re not Democrat party material, so buzz off.
“How serious can Democrats be about attracting support from young men if they promote their embrace of this guy?”
Trying to build on the spectacular success of the Li’l Davie Hogg experiment…?
PWS
He looks like he stepped out of an episode of King of the Hill, where he was driving Hank nuts.
I am suddenly very self continually about my beard and mustache. I think I may be shaving soon.
Was he standing in front of one of those giant fans that football teams use to keep the players cool? Did he have his head in a big vise to give it that lopsided look?
The mind boggles….
My first impression of that photo was “Who photoshopped up an old picture of Wil Weaton?!?”
–Dwayne
Semi-related Fun fact:
My own beard and mustache are trimmed in the likeness of Jonathan Frakes / Will Riker from Seasons 2+ of ST:TNG. (It’s not that I was trying to look like him so much as I just generally liked how it looked.)
–Dwayne
Nicely done.
jvb
Who wants to be the vice chair of any committee? Vice chair is the person who gets dumped on. It is quite likely he was volunteered for the job and/or he is trying to make a name for himself in the political world, His appearance may not matter to those in that group and because the role probably not require he be the face of the group they did not care what he looks like anyway. Things might be quite different if he were taking money from Democrats to run for office rather than helping put away the chairs after the meetings.
We have a lot of people in this world who are always trying not to be an ignominious organism and do things that they can control to make themselves stand out. Weird by my standards but not by others. The question is was he chosen for his abilities or simply to make the committee look inclusive.
On tangents, cotangents, and possibly even secants…
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of your bias, and I share that bias.
However, “You can’t judge a book by its cover, after all…“?
Really? That is the reason books have covers.
A much more reasonable statement is “You can’t always judge a book by its cover”. In fact, I believe that when I was young nobody repeated the saying without some qualifier meaning “always”. I would say the statement “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” is one of my pet peeves, except that for some reason the phrase “pet peeves” has always been, to borrow a phrase from the British, a pet hate of mine. Yes, most times the statement without the qualifier is used as shorthand, or just in being lazy, but it changes the meaning. It absolves the cover [creator] of too much responsibility for the impressions it gives.
I once heard a childless adult rail against parents saying to their fighting children “I don’t care who started it”. That statement is almost always exactly the incorrect message, and a bad lesson. The statement, however, is in my estimation almost always shorthand for “I can’t believe what either of you say about who started it”.
If the appearance, of a book cover, or of a promotional photo, is supposed to create a first impression, then to your point, I don’t like any of the impressions being conveyed by Kolby. You and I are not the market for it…but I’m sure it has a market.
No, you can never judge an actual book by it’s cover fairly or with any certainty. And the principle applies to people, though with people you are more likely to be right in the judgment.
Well, the real purpose of a dust jacket is to hook your interest and get you to pick the book up.
If you’re an author you hope that the artist has taken the time to read the book, or at least most of it, and that the cover actually has some relation to something in the book.
But what the publisher wants is for it to pique your interest. Then you can get to the blurb which actually should reflect something of what is in the book.
I haven’t known of too many people who thought rocking a Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg style was a good look.