Steve King: Hey, Wait, American Chicks Are Hot, Too

U.S. Rep. Steve King, apparently unable to resist the allure of David Lee Roth’s ode to Midwest farmers’ daughters, is defending American women against increasing foreign encroachment into supermodeling.

American chicks, reasons King, are hot enough to handle the supermodeling jobs in the States. That’s why King, a Republican from Kiron in western Iowa, opposed legislation that made it through a House subcommittee in recent days that would make it easier for foreign supermodels to work in the United States. He’s calling it the “Ugly Americans” bill.Some people are pretty psyched about the bill’s prospects, though, including a blogger with the Silicon Valley gossip site Valley Wag who thinks Indian/French/Irish Saira Mohan (pictured here) should get more work.

Roll Call reports in some detail King’s musings on the supermodel matter:

King took umbrage with legislation that would let more foreign-born fashion models into the United States for shoots. The bill, which would amend immigration laws that apply to willowy Estonian mannequins and their ilk, was approved on Thursday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law.

King seems to think there are plenty of good-looking ladies right here already, and that there’s no need to import foreign lovelies. “This bill is based on a faulty premise, the premise that there are not enough attractive people in the U.S,” King opined. “You might call it the Ugly Americans bill. In a country of 300 million people, don’t we have enough homegrown talent to grace the covers of Vogue and Mademoiselle?”

(Note to the Congressman: Mademoiselle is now defunct.)

But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), wasn’t buying that argument, and he took the opportunity to rib King for his own less-than-model-material looks. “It is probably true that we have good-looking people in Iowa and other places,” Weiner said. “I’m sure we have good-looking people from Iowa on this panel, although I wouldn’t necessarily quit your day job.”

King’s “homegrown” pitch recalls a Carroll Rotary meeting in which he referenced people in Singapore papering car windows so they could could have sex in private. He said Iowans need to have more kids themselves instead of relying on immigration to fill the population void here.

Here is the Carroll Daily Times Herald from April 24, 2006:

Former Lt. Gov. Art Neu of Carroll in a recent Rotary meeting asked the visiting King to elaborate on references the GOP congressman has made in the media to a “fertility” program King contends could plug a void now filled with immigrant labor.

“I gave them a whole list of things that we could do,” King said. “There are nations out there that encourage a greater birthrate.”

King singled out Singapore, a nation King said has had some privacy issues at the root of its birthrate problems.

He said the government of Singapore came up with the following plan to increase pregnancies: “We think you ought to put newspapers in your car (windows) to get more privacy.”

Added King, “I remember those things when I read them. They kind of stand out in my mind.”

King didn’t say more about his fertility plan. But for future reference he may want to note that Singapore also launched a “speed dating” program to encourage young professionals to meet and marry with dispatch.