• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 2, 2012

David Horsey -- who, according to his bio snippet on the L.A. Times Web site is a "Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist (and) a political commentator for the Los Angeles Times" -- recently expended nearly 500 words amusing himself over an apparent "debate" in the fashion community about whether  Kate Upton, the model adorning the cover of this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, is too -- shall we say -- zaftig.

Careful not to take sides in this crucial cultural debate, Mr. Horsey dishes the SEO ("…too-blond hair, her generic, pouty cheerleader face and her long legs that one critic described as looking as if they belong to a player for the WNBA. The casting director for Victoria’s Secret fashion shows said she’d never allow such a skank to darken her runway…") but then turns safely back to a lamentation that more folks seem to be interested in Kate Upton's body than bother to vote in the primaries. A tip of the hat to a guy who knows the meaning of traffic.

Perhaps if folks could have seen Kate Upton in her microscopic bikini instead of Mitt -- or, well, any of them really -- I expect that football field in Michigan would have looked more like a free Audioslave concert than the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel at 4 a.m.  At the risk of bringing up politics at this dinner party, is it just me -- or is this just about the worst slate of potential presidential candidates in memory? I thought I'd have to live another half a century to see anyone running for office more bizarre and moronic than Sarah Palin -- and boom, just three years later....

Feel free to fill up the comments box with testimonials for any or all of them, but almost nothing can be said to convince me that we are within a million miles of the best and brightest this country can offer. I know that the scrutiny and constant pressure to raise money and shift views to appease an electorate all over the sensibilities map keeps most right-thinking Americans out of politics, but surely we can find someone in this crowd of +311 million folks better than this lot (and IN this lot I include the guy one of them will eventually run against). I can think of several clients I've had in the past 25 years that I would vote for before any of these bubbleheads.

I confess that the SI Swimsuit Issue, in the age of Internet accessibility to photos of naked models and actresses (including most of the young ladies actually in each issue), has lost a good deal of its bad-guy allure over the years. In fact, when I saw the most recent copy on a stack of magazines at the gym the other day, I didn't even bother to flip through it (well, my glasses being in a locker about 300 steps away was in all fairness, an extenuating circumstance). But I recall with some fondness the early days of the issue, when there was tangible moral outrage over the amount of skin uncovered in each photo and loud debates about why a sports magazine read by impressionable young men was stooping to appeal to prurient interests rather than sticking to bats, balls, helmets  and field goals. But that single annual issue (and its broadcast and digital offspring) rang up sales like nothing else in the history of Time Inc. and became a national institution.

Now, like the slate of Republican candidates, it seems timeworn and irrelevant. (Not that there needs to be any real relevance to showing wonderful photos of some of the best-looking women on the planet wearing not more than some paint or a smile.) And unlike Newt and Mitt and Rick and Ron, the swimsuit issue provides a passing moment of amusement.