Finally, WaPo does Haircuts!

This is what I call some much needed investigative journalism. After all, there have been many obvious areas that one could investigate in the last few years, Plamegate, domestic wiretapping, Guantanamo, the missing $10 billion from the Iraq reconstruction budget, you know those pallets of cash they shipped to unknown parties, heck even most people would say the Katrina follow up isn't fully mined for tidbits of interest. But not at the WaPo! There it is all haircuts, all the time. As it should be....

Read it and weep!

Splitting Hairs, Edwards's Stylist Tells His Side of Story
Man Behind Pricey 'Dos Details Long Relationship
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer

At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail to meet his client, he began charging $300 to $500 for each cut, plus the cost of airfare and hotels when he had to travel outside California.

Torrenueva said one haircut during the 2004 presidential race cost $1,250 because he traveled to Atlanta and lost two days of work. ... if $400 seemed a lot for a haircut, how about one for three times that? {That's a good question, Post!}

The stylist said he has a vivid memory of the first time he met Edwards, in 2003.

The Beverly Hills hairstylist, a Democrat, said he hit it off with then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina at a meeting in Los Angeles ... Since then, Torrenueva has cut Edwards's hair at least 16 times. {The start of a long beautiful gay relationship perhaps?}

"He has nice hair," the stylist said of Edwards in an interview. "I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that's what we do."
{It does take an expert to make a democrat seem handsome or strong, doesn't it?}

"I'm disappointed and I do feel bad. If I know someone, I'm not going to say I don't know them," he said. "When he called me 'that guy,' that hit my ears. It hurt." He paused and then added, "I still like him. . . . I don't want to hurt him." {"Oh Jon, how could you do this to me?" wept Torrenueva.}

It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Edwards has campaigned for president, vice president and now president again, his hair seems to have attracted as much attention as, say, his position on health care. {That's true. I wonder just what kind of commentary it is? Perhaps, a sad commentary.}

But wait, there is more...

Torrenueva agreed to meet Edwards at the Century Plaza hotel in Los Angeles along with several fashion experts.

"There was a woman, an award-winning clothes designer -- I think she works in film and onstage, too. She was there with her swatches with materials for colors of suits, ties and what we were doing there was discussing his look. I was there for hair. {Could that have been Naomi Klein?}

"What I did was, there was too much hair on top, always falling down, and it made him look too youthful. I took the top down and balanced everything out. He couldn't see it. But then we went into the bathroom. He looked in the mirror and said, 'I love this,' and that was it."

{There is then a chronicle of all the many heartbreaking trysts to "cut hair."}

And despite the best efforts of Edwards, his wife and their campaign aides, there's been an obvious political impact. With each punch line on late night TV his image as a self-styled populist making poverty his signature issue was further eroded.
{class traitor, anyone?}

Thank goodness, the Washington Post has the journalistic credibility to finally tackle this important issue.

Stop the presses! The Post cites Aristotle and Edmund Burke!

Dear Mr. Milbank,

I had to rush to tell you of the strangest thing that happened to me this morning as I was reading the Post. I was confronted by the following offensive paragraph:

"From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, philosophers have written of the healthy tension that normally exists between the understanding and strategies of leaders and the sentiments and opinions of their people."

Aristotle? Edmund Burke? Before you know it we will be up to our ears in those weirdos Abe Lincoln and Thomas Paine! But wait, where had I heard this before?

It sounded to me like that fat, pompous windbag Al Gore was reaching into his esoteric bag of erudite tricks once again. I braced myself to begin the flagellation when I was suddenly struck by a odd happenstance.

It wasn't Gore speaking, much to my shock and dismay, it was the Post's own David Broder! Yes, that's right, Dean Broder spoke the horrid erudite words. Surely, this must be some mistake? Does the Dean think he is now The Smartest Smarty Pants in the Room? Does he think he is as smart as Gore? The Guy Who Invented the Internets?

You may want to walk across the hall and tell David to stop sounding like a pompous windbag! Hurry, before it is too late! Once those strange strange people like Aristotle and Edmund Burke are invoked it is only a matter of time before Jurgen Halbermas descends to crush us all.

Eruditely yours,
V. Publius

Milbank goes fourth!

Dear Mr. Milbank,
Kudos!

While I had thought it impossible to exceed the vapidity of your Washington Sketch entitled "Is it wise to be so smart?" from the May 30 edition of the Washington Post, your recent Sketch from June 28th, awkwardly entitled "Bill Had His Al, and Hillary Might Have Her Bill" has heroically triumphed!

Once again our intrepid reporter finds himself assailed by speeches in which "words such as "fissionable" and "Abrahamic dialogue" were invoked." How vexing! Yet all was not lost. At least the "speech was in a gilded ballroom of the Willard hotel, where waiters served roasted chicken and orzo salad at tables decorated with blue hydrangeas coordinated with the candidate's blue pantsuit." Thank goodness, at least there was something coordinated and appetizing about this miserable and tedious excursion.

Yet all was not well in Versailles! Some poor souls actually had to endure the indignity of "plastic boxes containing tuna sandwiches and bags of potato chips." "Balanced on their laps," no less. Quel damage!

And what a speech it was! Detestably it "occupied nine single-spaced pages and had the warning "3,325 words" at the top." The odious speech "lulled the crowd of 200 into utter silence. Eyelids drooped. Listeners shifted in their seats." How vexing. How utterly tedious! I am sure it was very tiresome indeed for our intrepid reporter. Why, don't they know you could have been out playing tennis instead. How discourteous! How unsolicitous!

I do wish to thank you for enduring this in our stead and reporting only the kernel of the tiresome ordeal and sparing our delicate sensibilities from the inexhaustible details. What could one possibly need to know about a speech which "laid out this great policy, a lot of intricate detail, to a bunch of policy wonks?" Why simply the highlights, darling, such as these "bon mots:" "I revert back to the Nunn-Lugar initiatives, which have been underfunded," and "the IAEA naturally has the lead on nuclear issues," and "there are at least six major reasons why Iran is strategically significant."" In fact, "He could be heard to utter phrases such as" these. No need to bother us with what those six tiresome reasons could possibly be. At least we were served up a few delectable "bon mots," the most appealing of which was no doubt the long denied "in conclusion."

My esteemed Mr. Milbank, once again, the Nation owes you a debt of gratitude for sparing us the noxious details of what are clearly boring policy speeches that last the entirety of "a detailed, hour long discussion." How can our poor brains be expected to retain focus for an entire hour? It is simply too ghastly. It defies time itself. "Tonight? This afternoon." The mind boggles.

Please do yourself a favor and get out of this business before it damages your health.

Admiringly yours,
V. Publius

Dana Milbank is a simpleton

Dear Mr. Milbank,
I am still trying to wrap my brain around your recent offering "Is it
wise to be so smart?" from the May 30 edition of the paper.

Apart for your kooky imaginings of Iowa hog farmers, references to the
great thinkers of our age, like "Schwartz from Germantown" and
thinking Abe Lincoln is somehow "esoteric", there really wasn't much
of the actual Gore book presented. In fact, I think you were able to
summarize (incorrectly) the whole thesis of the book in about one
sentence. Here it is: "The Bush administration has manipulated the
facts on the Iraq war and a range of other policies, the public has
been easily manipulated, and Americans watch too much television."

Brilliant!

Would you like to see how a real journalist might do it? Someone who
is literate perhaps?

Someone who knows the difference between Adam Smith and Thomas
Jefferson? Someone with a nodding acquiantance with learning or
history or facts? Well, here for the record is Jonathan Alter over at
Newsweek:

"Gore starts from a trenchant premise that our means of processing
information and finding rational solutions are badly corrupted by
television, a theme he has been exploring since college. Without any
misplaced nostalgia for a pre-TV age, he argues that the "marketplace
of ideas" that grew out of the rise of the printed word and the
Enlightenment has been largely supplanted by a medium best suited to
stoking fear, which is, he notes, "the most powerful enemy of reason."
The human mind, Gore writes, is now nearly hard-wired to respond to
emotional but fundamentally trivial human-interest stories on TV."
(Or apparently also in the Post.)

You can read the rest here, and you should.

Isn't it amazing the way he organizes words so that they form coherent
thoughts? And that the thoughts he writes actually have something to
do with the book he is discussing?

You may need to consult a dictionary for some of the difficult or
"erudite" words, like "trenchant", "premise" and "supplanted". You
should not feel ashamed to do so. Writers should know what words
mean. Also, "medium" here refers to a means of conveying information,
not something of middle size.

But you will eventually get the hang of it. Keep trying.

Trenchantly yours,
V. Publius

P.S. I cannot possibly improve on Jonathan Alter's review of The Assault on Reason, however, I would like to quote just one brief passage that occurs on page 248:

"I believe that the viability of democracy depends upon the openness, reliability, appropriateness, responsiveness, and two-way nature of the communications environment. After all, democracy depends upon the regular sending and receiving of signals -- not only between the people and those who aspire to be their elected representatives but also among the people themselves. It is the connection of each individual to the national conversation that is the key. I believe that the citizens of any democracy learn, over time, to adopt a basic posture toward the possibilities of self-government. ... My generation learned in our youth to expect that democracy would work. ... Many young Americans now seem to feel that the jury is out on whether American democracy actually works or not."

Crass, self-centered, pedantic, smug, erudite, and esoteric
or
cogent, clear, straight-forward, prescient, compelling and principled?

I ask you.

Guiliani brays like jackass, but more annoying reports NY Times

John McCain proves he is irrelevent, possibly racist, nazi

In the annals of uncritical reporting, this one is yet another indication that John McCain (aka Senator McFudd) is increasingly irrelevent, has a tin-ear, Nazi sympathies and is possibly a racist.

From noted "assasination" website, Media Matters:

Obama, responding in part to McCain's criticism of his recent Iraq war vote, issued a May 25 press release arguing that "the course we are on in Iraq" is not "working." Obama said "a reflection of that [is] the fact that Senator McCain required a flack jacket" and other military protection when walking through a Baghdad market during a trip to Iraq in April. In a response the same day, McCain took issue with Obama's spelling: "By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket."

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines "flak" as:

Main Entry: flak
Variant(s): also flack \flak\

1: antiaircraft guns
2: the bursting shells fired from flak
3: also flack : criticism, opposition

Thereby entirely demolishing Senator Fudd's argument in the time it takes to look up one word. But more telling, to me anyway, is the etymology of the word.

Etymology: German, from Flugabwehrkanonen, from Flieger (flyer) + Abwehr (defense) + Kanonen (cannons)
Date: 1938

So, John McCain clearly prefers the Nazi spelling, even though the word has been incorporated into the English language. Hmmm, troubling.

Not only does Senator Fudd correct the spelling of his esteemed African-American collegue, he does it incorrectly. Troubling, indeed.

UPDATE: The New York Daily News is reporting:

An unnamed McCain aide piled on, telling the Politico Web site that "Obama wouldn't know the difference between an RPG and a bong."

I thought that had to be a joke when I first heard it.

So Senator "Grampa" McFudd thinks an effective rebuttal to criticism on the Iraq War is to critique the spelling??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!?