Heck Of A Guy

The once irresistibly snarky-nasty Wonkette has managed to blip onto my blog radar for the first time in months by proffering a Leonard Cohen clone candidate.

The mystifyingly titled January 8, 2008 post, Dennis Kucinich Is Too Cool For Your Stupid American Presidency¹ reduces to the following punch line,

The Set-up For The Punch Line

Wonkette started with this stylish photograph,³ which the post describes as “Here’s Dennis Kucinich in a hot-lady sandwich as featured in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.”⁴

After two days of pondering that was triggered by the notion that the photo “reminded us [the Wonkette staff] of something.” Wonkette realizes, as noted above, that “Dennis looks almost exactly like Leonard Cohen in the same exact situation on the cover of Death of a Ladies’ Man.”

The Visuals

Wonkette cropped the original newspaper photo of Dennis and the Dames to make the shape of the graphic congruent with the Death of a Ladies’ Man album cover. To produce the image below, I’ve simply moved the two shots from opposite ends of the Wonkette post to display them here side by side.

These are the photos that represent, according to Wonkette, “the same exact situation.”

Well, both groups involve a guy and two girls. I’m not certain what the women in the the Kucinich photo are doing or planning to do, but the term “girl-on-girl” does come to mind while – and this may be a first for me – “threesome” does not.⁵ If this is, as Wonkette declares it, “Dennis Kucinich in a hot-lady sandwich,” the order must have been for “one hot-lady sandwich, hold the Kucinich” or, were I more charitable, ” “one hot-lady sandwich with Kucinich on the side.” Perhaps the ladies are inspecting each others pores to determine if it’s time for a cleansing or each others teeth to assure that no lettuce or other dinner artifacts are on display.

On the other hand, after a single glance at the women on the Death of a Ladies’ Man cover, I’m pretty darn certain I know what they have on their agenda and it seems to have something to do with Leonard Cohen, who, unlike his Wonkette-appointed twin, is squarely in the center of the scene.

Let’s see, what else is exactly the same? Oh, the coffee in the Kucinich photo is a potable fluid as is, one assumes, whatever liquid is in the bottle on ice on the album cover. So that’s something in common.

How about Wonkette’s contention that “Dennis looks almost exactly like Leonard Cohen?”

First, I admit I never see the resemblance in any of these look-alike lineups. In my previous look at look-alikes that look like Leonard Cohen, Now For The Leonard Cohen (Separated At) Birth Day, I felt confident I could identify Leonard Cohen, even were he to be surrounded by his reputed doppelgangers, Dustin Hoffman, Bernard Tschumi, Mr. Spock, and Hope Sandoval.⁶

To facilitate the Kucinich-Cohen comparison, I isolated their head shots from the rest of their respective graphic context. Because part of Mr. Kucinich’s face was obscured by the woman to his left, I also created a composite of the original shot of him and another photo⁷

From left to right: Dennis Kucinich from original photo, Leonard Cohen
from Death of a Ladies’ Man album cover, Dennis Kucinich composite photo

Yep, those look like three identical photos to me, too. Perhaps someone should warn Anjani to prevent any embarrassing mix-ups.

Heck of a Guy Bonus

Does Dennis Kucinich most resemble (from left to right) Art Garfunkel on his Breakaway album cover, Mike Randle on his My Music Loves You (Even If I Don’t) album cover, or Leonard Cohen on his Death of a Ladies’ Man album cover? [Click on graphic to view larger image]

1. This title is paired with the equally mysterious subtitle, “Death of a Ladies’ Candidacy”↩
2. After a vigorous search has failed to uncover an alternative interpretation, I am forced to conclude that the “Dennis” Wonkette is referencing is Dennis Kucinich.↩
3. “Stylish photograph” is Wonkette’s term↩
4. Wonkette also provides the story behind the photo: “The photo is one of a series featuring the gal on the left, an actress recruited by photographer Bruce Gilden for his “Party Girl” shoot. The idea, we guess, was to contrast this elegant, beautiful Hollywood actress with the hideous excuses for humanity that we elect to national office.”↩
5. I’m going to trust the New York Times and Wonkette that Dennis wasn’t Photoshopped into that picture and that it just looks that way because the women are ignoring him.↩
6. Since that post, I’ve found another suggested Leonard look-alike; one taliesin238 at AnswerBank writes, with an abundance of enthusiasm and exclamation marks, perhaps offered in expiation of the statement’s idiosyncratic sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, “Good god ive just realised after all these years!!! Two of my all time favourite heros look soooo much like one another. They are no other than the greatest Leonard Cohen and Al Pacino!! Surely you must agree!!!” The terminal imperative notwithstanding, the official Heck of a Guy position on the the proposition that Leonard Cohen and Al Pacino look – ahem – “soooo much like one another,” is “maybe, maybe not.” Anyway, I’ve included below, for the 3 Pacino-naive adults in North America, two photos of Al Pacino. The photo on the left is Mr. Pacino at age 21 in a Rhode Island mugshot from his January 7, 1961 arrest for carrying a concealed weapon. (Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair that even in a Rhode Island mugshot, Al Pacino looks great.) The photo on the right was taken in 2007.
   

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7. The second photo in the composite, contributing the left jawline, is the screenshot shown below from an appearance on the Daily Show.
   

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