Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: Is Sally Satel the Sophia Loren to Kerry Howley’s Jayne Mansfield?

July 3, 2007

Is Sally Satel the Sophia Loren to Kerry Howley’s Jayne Mansfield?

If you already know who all four of those people are, come to Sacramento Arcata immediately. You and I will have a blast.

Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and right-wing pundit, is the woman on the right in this photograph from May 9 showing part of a panel debate on the subject of free markets in human organs:

Kerry Howley, a senior editor of Reason, the political magazine that’s almost always right about everything, speaks into the microphone. I give thanks for the picture to Reason’s blog, where libertarian gentlemen find themselves continually addled by Howley’s multilayered charms.

Judge for yourself the parallels between that picture and this one from April 1957:

Italian movie star Sophia Loren can’t help noticing the plunging neckline of February 1955 Playmate Jayne Mansfield. (June 29 was the 40th anniversary of Mansfield’s death in a car accident at 34. Contrary to the morbid rumor, she was not decapitated.) I admit it’s juvenile, and maybe a bit sexist, to wish to imagine Satel having an attitude towards Howley similar to Loren’s towards Mansfield. But at least it’s a good launching point for wondering out loud about Howley’s attitude towards her inevitable role, perhaps ambiguous in its rewards, as an intellectual sex symbol.

How does an ambitious and talented political journalist feel about having to go through life so dark Irish whatever*, with such a silky voice? (In this NPR audio clip, she speaks second.) Is she flattered, embarrassed, annoyed, or some combination of the three by the kind of attention those traits get? Sorry, folks, but I wouldn’t ask so nosily and creepily if I didn’t love women so much. I’m just doing my thing for this particular lifetime, like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. (If Hindu literature scares you, just rent The Legend of Bagger Vance. Matt Damon more or less plays Arjuna in it.)

*August 9, 2007, 3:05 p.m.: What can I say for my audacious guess except that everyone’s a little bit racist? (Everyone’s a little bit prudish, too, by the way.) In an excellent article for Reason, she volunteers only this on the subject: “I am ambiguously ethnic, in turns thought to be Asian or Italian.”

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 12:17 PM

  • Blogger Margaret left this comment at July 6, 2007 6:20 AM  
    On a closer look, One of Jane Mansfield's bitties are peeking out looking at poor Ms. Howly.

    Perhaps in a sense, some people know a thing is there, or rather a thing is right and find themselves aghast when such a matter of truth is revealed.

    Then there are those like Dr. John when he was a little boy, so inclined to poke and prod a right thing with a stick. To see if it moves, reacts or goes back into hiding.

    We'll never know.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at July 6, 2007 3:58 PM  
    Margaret,
    You mean, it’s peeking out at Loren.

    Dr. John who? The musician?

  • Blogger Robert Paulson left this comment at July 16, 2007 10:38 AM  
    Kerry Howley shows up pretty regularly on a show called "Red Eye" thats on Fox News Channel every night at 2am easter/11pm Pacific.

    When it (rarely) gets serious, the show has a very libertarian [social issues]to conservative [defense, terrorism] slant.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at July 16, 2007 12:12 PM  
    I don’t have cable, but YouTube has some excerpts of Howley on that show.

  • Anonymous The Wine Commonsewer left this comment at July 21, 2007 8:00 AM  
    "Although Mansfield's actual mode of death was gruesome, she was not beheaded. According to the police report on the accident, "the upper portion of this white female's head was severed." Her death certificate notes a "crushed skull with avulsion (forcible separation or detachment) of cranium and brain."

    OTOH, like playing horseshoes, tossing hand grenades, and using shotguns, close is pretty much a cigar.

    :-)

    Interesting though, this is the first i had heard that she was not decapitated. That was standard reporting in the sixties when it happened it was certainly a widespread urban myth. Every kid in my school believed it.

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