It's the eyes, man...

Okay. Now, putting aside for the moment the sheer horror of the idea of tooling around South America on a theme cruise with Hugh Hewitt as the guest of note - and really, isn't everyone's idea of a good time getting on a cruise ship with a Christian Conservative and filling the humid sub-equatorial nights with the sound of laughter, popping champagne corks and discussions about States' Rights? - but I stumbled across this image and had to remark on what a wholly miscalculated ad it is.

And it's all thanks to the very, very (I can only hope unintentionally) creepy smile that Hugh apparently has had surgically attached. I understand photo shoots - how you have to keep smiling and smiling and it's about as real as a three-peso bill - but surely there was another shot from the session where Hugh didn't look quite so pained. He looks like he's anticipating the advertised voyage to rank somewhere below having a polyp removed from the lower intestine on the scale of "Good Times."

Not for him - for you. He's going to sit back and enjoy your suffering on the Voyage of the Damned, 2008.

A good part of the lack of real joy I'm sensing is the parted teeth smile, which just ain't natural lookin'. That, and the serious disconnect going on between what that overly exaggerated Joker-like grinning rictus is conveying and the complete dearth of any happiness from his eyes. Look very closely at those eyes. Those are not the eyes of a man who's thrilled to be getting on a ship with you. Those are the eyes of a man who has seen terrible, terrible things, scenes of such empty horror and soul-searing despair that they now swim before him, unbidden, at all hours of the day and night. Those eyes suggest that Hugh will be giving a lot of his talks during the cruise from a barstool on the Fiesta Deck.

Frankly, those eyes combined with the "I'm-so-fucking-happy-I-could-shit!" Fright Night grin he's sporting make it look like he's gone totally around the Event Horizon.

I have to admit, the idea of taking a cruise with a political radio host who might have actually gone insane (rather than just kind of playing at it like they usually do) seems like a whole helluva lot more fun than I'm sure the reality will be.

D.