Ex-girlfriends and ex-wife confirm Fred Thompson's "trophy husband" status on Jeri Kehn's arm

Further to my June 4th post entitled Fred Thompson and Jeri Kehn: Trophy wife, trophy husband?, the Sunday Times of London's Washington correspondent quotes several of Sen. Thompson's ex-girlfriends directly with ecstatic endorsements, and repeats his own statement that his ex-wife has told him she intends to campaign for him. (h/t Allah at Hot Air.)

Combined with his commanding height, resonant voice, distinctive looks, and wicked sense of humor; his career accomplishments in Tennessee, Washington, and Hollywood (and the presumptive wealth that accompanies the latter); his since-reconfirmed fertility; and the number of prominent and successful career-woman competitors whom Ms. Kehn had to best before reeling him in — doesn't this report make Fred exactly the sort of catch that an ambitious woman moving in Washington's circles of power would want to show off to her peers, to prove that she is indeed capable of landing someone extremely desirable by their standards?

I repeat — I think there is just as good an argument that Sen. Thompson is a "trophy husband" as that Ms. Kehn is a "trophy wife."

The new picture I've reprinted here is from Sen. Thompson's official almost-campaign website, ImWithFred.com. Probably a third of the internet traffic my blog has gotten this month has been to my June 4th post, many via image searches through various search engines that turned up one or another of the various pix of them together that I've scavenged from around the net.

Beware of relying on such searches, though: I've seen several blogs link, and even republish, as being photos of Ms. Kehn, photos that are actually of a blonde country-western singer whom Sen. Thompson once dated. In its inscrutable ways, Google's image search for "Jeri Kehn" now includes a picture from my blog on its first page of returns —€” but the "hot babe" picture it shows is actually of Jeri Ryan (dressed as ST:Voyager's Borgalicious "Seven-of-Nine"), the ex-wife of former Illinois senate candidate Jack Ryan, about whom I wrote in a 2004 pre-election post commenting on John Kerry's having dated Morgan Fairchild.

(And yes, I do look for excuses to post G- and PG-rated pictures of very attractive women. So? A blogger in Ken MacLeod's new thriller, The Execution Channel (review forthcoming), secretly runs three porno websites to support his blogging! I have my standards, but I don't mind if Ms. Kehn's curves, or public curiosity about them, boost my blog's traffic — no more than she likely minded if they boosted her career opportunities.)

I'm also impressed with former Thompson girlfriend Georgette Mosbacher's comments in the London Times' piece about both Thompson and Kehn:

"It says a lot about his character that his ex-wife and ex-girlfriends think he is fabulous," said Mosbacher. "Character is important in a president."

Mosbacher is a friend of Jeri Kehn, Thompson'™s second wife, whom he married in 2002. At 24 years his junior, Kehn has been described as a "trophy wife" but the former Republican consultant is as clever as she is vivacious, according to Mosbacher.

"Just because Jeri is fun and beautiful, one should not make the mistake of stereotyping her. She is not someone who seeks the limelight and will not be out front, but will be very supportive," she said.

Ms. Mosbacher, the ex-wife of Houston oil baron and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Rob Mosbacher, is among other things an attractive socialite herself, and she has also endured her share of catty remarks about being a "trophy wife" — notwithstanding CEO jobs with a pair of companies and political clout in her own right (co-chair of the Republican National Committee's Finance Committee). I suspect that she and Ms. Kehn are both used to being misunderestimated. A critic or opponent who stereotypes you hands you much of the power you may need to later surprise and quite possibly humiliate him or her.

(A last comment: It's by no means crucial to Ms. Kehn's own list of accomplishments, but I'm not certain that she is in fact an attorney, as has been reported — or quite possibly simply assumed — at various places around the net. The Nashville Post story that I quoted earlier, for example, said that she "was an attorney and political media consultant at the once-powerful Washington [law] firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, and McPherson and Hand ... [b]efore that firm merged with DLA Piper in 2002." But Verner, Liipfert offered services besides legal advice, and it hired a fair number of politically savvy and well-connected non-lawyers, among them a famous former Governor of Texas, the late Ann Richards. I don't find Ms. Kehn's name among the online list of current members of the D.C. Bar Association, although that could also simply reflect her retirement from practice. If anyone can lay hands on definitive info one way or the other, please let me know by email or in a comment. Thanks!)

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UPDATE (Tue Jun 26 @ 7:15pm): I'm advised — via an email from a trusted correspondent who's well connected to do such checking, and who was kind enough to do so (but prefers not to be named) — that Sen. Thompson's spouse generally goes by "Jeri Thompson," and that she is not a lawyer herself. I'm guessing, too, that within the next few weeks, Sen. Thompson's expanded official web presence will include more, and more definitive, biographical information about her as well.