Stephen does Mitt Romney’s “confident half-smile.”
Reposting because I just had a conversation about this. I was kind of shocked to see that the next-day analysis from the mainstream media of one candidates facial expressions during the debates was NOT what Colbert is illustrating here. I heard things about Obama’s smirk but nothing about the this, which I thought was the more egregious facial distortion of the night.
Romney has trouble polling as a “regular guy” for all sorts of reasons and he’ll never be identifiable because the dude is a total political construction. Pause the debate at any point last night. Pause any of his debates from the republican primaries from months ago. Same face. Same benign, construction of synthesized pleasantness designed to betray no real emotion and offend nothing. It’s not that face of a human at rest, nor is it one of any feeling. It’s the type of face a manufacturer might place on a robot while attempting to approximate inert human features while knowing he doesn’t want the thing to appear cold. The result is a total feeling of coldness. It’s like how your parents would scare you more when they were quiet than when they were yelling. You can’t see the anger on Romney’s face because the construct is so solid. You can just feel it.
