Heidi Cruz, Melania Trump, Their Husbands, PACs and SuperPACs, and Other Players in the Most Recent Drama

The contest is a bit more balanced

when Donald Trump doesn't choose the pictures.

I won't recount too many of the details of the Facebook ads released by Liz Mair, who heads the super PAC Make America Awesome, and of the ensuing Twitter debate. Anyone who cares has already read the material. For anyone who doesn't care, it's bad enough that I'm devoting space and time even to the fallout.

I don't have any strong feelings about Heidi Cruz other than the feeling that the man to whom she is married is perhaps a raving lunatic. As far as her appearance is concerned, she looks like an ordinary person to me. She's probably at least as attractive as are the mothers of most of my friends. 

I will go on record as saying that releasing the ad featuring a nude Melania Trump was not a strategically well-planned tactic. The Mormons already didn't like Donald Trump. Cruz already had the Mormon republican vote. There was little to gain and a lot to lose by releasing the pro-Cruz anti-Trump endorsement, since it isn't 1896, and word of what is released to the Facebook feeds of people living in Utah usually makes it to the rest of the population, some of whom may be put off by sexist implications of the endorsement.

The add was not distributed by Cruz's campaign but, instead, as was noted earlier, by a super PAC opposing Trump.  While  the super PAC's  role in releasing this ad diminishes the culpability Cruz and those operating his campaign perhaps slightly, neither can Cruz accept the benefit of the super PAC's involvement while simultaneously denying all responsibility for what the group does when the group's actions appear to have crossed lines that shouldn't have been crossed. If he's unwilling to categorically distance himself from  all tactics and maneuverings of a super PAC, he'll be linked with anything said or done with the presumed intent of disposing of Donald Trump as the republican candidate for president.

Cruz claims that spouses are off-limits. Will he cling to that mantra if he eventually wins the republican nomination and finds himself running against Hillary Clinton? I'd be very surprised. Perhaps spouses should be off-limits, but if there's anything about a spouse that is interesting enough to be used against a candidate in a political campaign, in all probability it can and will be used.

Trump's tweet juxtaposing the photo of Heidi Cruz's face caught in an awkward pose next to a glamour shot of his wife was asinine beyond belief. Melania Cruz would have to be considered to be more physically attractive than Heidi Cruz would be. At the same time, it's far from a level playing field to select a flattering photo of one person, then to place it, for purposes of comparison, next to a picture snapped while another person is speaking. Depending upon the particular dialect of a given U.S. region, there are between forty-eight and fifty phonemes used to produce the American dialect of English. A list of these phonemes is probably available on Wikipedia or at some similar site. A curious person might download the list, them take a selfie while producing each of these sounds. When the person viewed the selfies, the person would probably discover that he or she looked quite silly when articulating certain phonemes. If you think I'm exaggerating, look at yourself in a mirror while you are making a /v/, /f/, /r/, /p/, /b/, /m/, or /w/ sound.

Any major disparity between the perceived levels of attractiveness possessed by Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz can probably be explained with the rationale that
Melania Trump is a former supermodel while Heidi Cruz is not. When I think about it, the very idea of Ted Cruz being married to a supermodel is ludicrous. He's most fortunate to have found a wife as attractive as Heidi Cruz is. The idea of Donald Trump being married to a former supermodel would be even more outrageous were it not for the fact that Trump is in possession of an almost insane amount of money. That sort of money can be a motivating factor in marriage. Sometimes a person who is leaps and bounds above another in physical attractiveness  may be persuaded by money to tie the knot with a person as aesthetically challenged even as is Donald Trump. 

That Donald Trump is posting his wife-comparison tweets is inane. That Ted Cruz is responding is equally farcical. That the national media is covering this not-even-schoolyard-worthy dispute is even more preposterous.

It would be funny if it weren't very closely connected to a U.S. presidential election. One of these two men will very likely have the republican nomination in a few short months. God help us all.