My new heart throb

Okay, I admit it. I’ve for years thought of Fabio as a joke. The bulging muscles, the overly squared jaw, the flowing locks — to me he looked like a caricature of a man, rather than a man. I’m now doing mea culpas for having been guilty of that kind of look-ism. It turns out that Fabio isn’t just another rather bizarrely pretty face, he’s a thinker — and, despite an unnecessary number of obscenities, he’s thinking the kind of thoughts I like:

“The Israeli people have been the sacrificial lamb of history,” Fabio declares. It’s mid-August, and the bombs are dropping in Lebanon as we stand in the kitchen of his sprawling Spanish-style mansion in Los Angeles (his publicist asked that we keep the neighborhood a secret to deter stalkers). The so-called Harlequin heartthrob, a diehard news junkie, has had a lot on his mind lately, particularly when it comes to Middle East policy and the Iraq war.

“It’s about f*****g time,” he says, as Fox News reports on Israel’s attempt to push Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon. “[The Jews] have been getting killed for 5,000 years. Enough is enough. The rest of the world does not give a shit, except America, because the Israelis have no oil. Everyone sticks with those Arabs—because they have the oil.”

Oil is a big issue for Fabio. Despite being an avid dirt-bike aficionado, he’d like to see America wean itself off fossil fuels. “We should f*****g get alternative energy and tell all the Arabs and the rest of the world to stick it up their a**,” he says. “F**k them and the oil!”

Bless his heart, he’s not just my kind of guy when it comes to foreign politics and the right reason, as opposed to the loony reason, to go green, he also genuinely likes his adopted country.  That is, he doesn’t come here, benefit from American freedoms, and still go around badmouthing the place:

Fabio has a deep respect for the United States, which he credits with helping him achieve his incredible success. He has traveled the world, and says he has no doubt that America is by far the best country out there.

Fabio isn’t a mere Republican sycophant, though.  He is clear that he’s not a Republican, and he thinks that going into Iraq was a big mistake.  However, with the logic of someone who was in the military, he’s totally clear on the fact that, if you’re going to wage war, you wage war, you don’t just mess around with delicacy:

He’s also critical of how the war has been waged. “We went in too fast,” he says. “To me, shock and awe should not be a light touch. Where’s the shock, you know?” The model, who served the once-mandatory 18 months in the Italian military after high school, nods a lot when he speaks. He’s so damn friendly, even when calling for mass carnage, that I find myself nodding along with him.

“Bomb them for a few years,” he suggests, “And when they start coming out with the white flag … bomb them a little bit more. Then you go in with our soldiers.”

Clearly, Fabio will not be the type of model who goes off and cavorts with loathsome dictators.  I feel like running out and buying a romance novel with him on the cover just to make a statement and to apologize for underestimating his capacity for rational thinking solely because of his looks.

Hat tip: Hot Air