Obama's lean and hungry look

In a whimsical column comparing Obama to Mr Darcy, Maureen Dowd records one Texan voter's nervous appraisal of Obama's physique.

“He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

openUSA remembers its Shakespeare and Julius Caesar's wariness of his scrawny would-be assassin Cassius.

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.