When Caitlyn Jenner said to Sean Hannity, “I love California,” I totally bought it. Despite my reservations and curled lip. The words were breathy, nostalgic, and weird, especially in that nerdy voice coming from behind that dishy hairdo. But I believed it in a way I’ve never believed anything that Sean Hannity has said. And if the Wheaties-box-Olympian-turned-reality-TV-star is going to upend California politics — a prospect about which I have my doubts and dreads — it is because, unlike the normal Republican pols, there is a real emotion behind the artificial appearance.
A normal Republican politician would say Malibu was awesome in the 1980s because of “affordability” or some other chartable metric. But with Jenner you get the sense that Malibu’s awesomeness was self-certifying. It was the smells, the sense of opportunity, the din — the way the sun shines into a convertible full of teased hair. With Jenner, the organs might have been misplaced, but the glands are still pumping hormones in there somewhere.
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