Some physical traits just seem to fit certain characteristics about the person who has them, and movies have done much to solidify such perceptions – perhaps even creating them.  At the risk of offending some of my beautiful readers, the blondes-are-dumb meme has never really gone out of style since The Marilyn – but of course, really smart blondes know how to use that meme to advantage.

Similarly, big muscles just seem to go with larger-than-life characters.  Not necessarily bad guys, but dudes who are inherently more than Joe Average.  The best example is probably The Arnold.  Since the Terminator, nobody can even imagine a remake with, say, Matt Damon or some other pretty boy in the lead.

Blue eyes are another thing.  Paul Newman made them the eye color of Everyman until Henry Fonda's character in Once Upon a Time in the West showed that steely blue eyes communicate cold, psychotic madness in a way nothing else can.

Redheads may embody more stereotypes than any other.  Fiery tempers.  Hotness.  Fun.  Who can forget Lucille Ball, a beautiful woman in her own right, but remembered for I Love Lucy?  Redheads are also good at portraying bullies, like the guy who beat up Ralphie in A Christmas Story.

Then there was Kirk Douglas in those hard-guy roles, lantern jaw lending verisimilitude to his character.  That jaw communicated hardness but also the idea of a man given to honor and straight-backed, straitlaced gentlemanliness.

Sometimes reality conflicts starkly with stereotypes.  Today, Robert Mueller, the lantern of all jaws, gives the lie to the notion that lantern jaws imply decency, justice, and fair play.  A shame, that, because a reputation to just about that effect preceded Mueller in his task as special counselor: integrity personified, a tough ex-Marine rising to head the FBI.

This man, jaw jutting sternly and eye fixed unwaveringly on justice, would get to the bottom of it, whatever "it" was.

Well.  After almost a year on the job, Mueller has found exactly nothing of what he was hired to find.  Either he's either an Inspector Clouseau or there's no there there.  In the latter case, he should just tell us that, tell us what he has found, and fold up shop.

But he hasn't done that.  With a posse of 17 or 15 or 14 or whatever Trump-haters and Hillary-lovers, Mueller barges ahead with his sham investigation, perhaps on the theory that it keeps some vicious people off the streets.  One uncharitably wonders if Mueller isn't covering for Deep State colleagues, giving them time to hide their tracks and conceal their guilt.

People with names like Comey, and Clapper, and Brennan, and Lerner.  People like that.

Bobby, my boy, you have destroyed our illusions about the lantern-jawed.  We no longer mistake you for a hero in a white hat.  Actually, you look increasingly like just another Washington crook.  At least Nixon had the decency to use the right word.