My two cents on "thigh-gate"

Skip­per: “…We even missed the mini skirts!”

Gillian: “What are mini-​skirts?”

Skip­per: “You remem­ber when we left women’s skirts were clear down to here, (indi­cates the knee) while we were gone they came up to here (indi­cates WAY up the leg), now they’re back down to here again. Gilli­gan, we missed from here to here!”

Res­cue from Gilligan’s Island 1978

It is an invari­able truth of CPAC that there is, every year, an inor­di­nate num­ber of incred­i­ble look­ing women dressed in a rather notice­able way.

As a man who is mar­ried, but not dead…this is not a fact that goes unnoticed.

This year at CPAC the skirts seemed to get higher MUCH higher to the point where I men­tioned in pass­ing: “Why bother even wear­ing a skirt? Just wear a bathing suit and be done with it.”

What really sur­prised me was all the debate that has come of this from Melissa Cloth­ier, then Erick Erick­son Robert Stacy McCain (twice), Dan Riehl Daily pun­dit, insty, Lit­tle Miss Attila, Lisa Graas and more.

There are three sim­ple ways to look at this and I’m going to say them:

As a man: If women beau­ti­ful women choose to dress in a way that shows off their var­i­ous assets I will notice them.

As a father: I sug­gest that if you are a col­lege age woman at CPAC net­work­ing is good, but it might not be healthy to be hook­ing up with strangers at a national con­fer­ence, no mat­ter what their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion.

As a per­son try­ing to carry him­self as a gen­tle­man: I will do my best to not allow notic­ing a beau­ti­ful woman to over­ride my deal­ings with her as a per­son or a blog­ger or a sub­ject of an interview.

My advice to men is this: If a woman is so attrac­tive as to be a dis­trac­tion com­pli­ment the women on it right way and get it out-​of-​the-​way, that way it won’t be on the back of your mind when doing other things.

My advice to women is this: It’s not for me to tell you how to dress, but if you choose to dress in a way that makes men notice then 1. Don’t be sur­prised if men notice you. 2. Don’t be offended if they com­pli­ment you.

Oh and for the record, I know who Tina Korbe is and met her in pass­ing but I don’t know really know her socially. I didn’t have time for the San­to­rum inter­view and didn’t even notice the length of her skirt one way or the other until it was pointed out to me. That she is an attrac­tive woman is self-​evident, that she is a fine writer has been amply proven from her work at Hotair and that’s really all that counts in this context.

In clos­ing I’d like to con­grat­u­late her on her engage­ment may she and her future hus­band enjoy a life­time of happy years together.

Update 2: Insta­lanche, and pon­der this. I’ve posted a ton of stuff on CPAC, shot a bunch of inter­views and dived into the mid­dle of the occupods to pro­vide use­ful con­tent. And the most pop­u­lar post on CPAC that I’ve writ­ten is this one…and it’s not even close.

Update 3: I see Stacy is get­ting some grief over his post. As a friend of his let me assure you that he does not believe Tina Korbe has done any­thing indeco­rous and had absolutely no intent to embar­rass her in any way. I will per­son­ally vouch for Stacy’s good inten­tions here till the cows come home and then even after they’ve set­tled down in the barn for a light lunch.