My fellow Quakers:

Throughout the course of this semester, I take it as my responsibility–no, my duty–to expose to you injustices wrought by our elected officials and to hold politicians accountable for their corruption, malfeasance and deceit. And no less importantly, their bad hair.

Senator Joseph R. Biden (rushlimbaugh.com)

Now, this last one might not seem like a major offense, just a petty way to pick on someone I disagree with. But I beg to differ. We Americans hold our authorities to the highest of standards and endow them with the mightiest of powers. Sometimes, however, our revered politicians abuse their privilege for vanity. Alas, I give you the ultimate injunction: the combover.

You see, a combover isn’t just a combover: it is a form of deception. If your congressman, senator, state representative or mayor has a combover, he’s lying to you. He wants you to believe that he’s not bald, balding, old or out of touch. He wants you to think he has a lustrous John Edwards-like head of hair. You know, he’s “hip.” Bottom line, he just doesn’t want you to know his hairline and the ozone layer are receding at equal rates.

But it’s not true, nor is it right. In a free moment, I urge you to catch a committee hearing on C-SPAN, where expert camera angles shed light on Washington’s most shining scalps (touche). It is time we put our foot down to such tomfoolery!

Senator Patrick Leahy (Wikipedia.com)

Our first perpetrator in this series: Senator Joseph R. Biden, senior senator from our diminutive state to the south, Delaware.

With such an egregious combover, one can rightfully question Senator Biden’s character. The combover is not just duplicitous; it conveys weakness, or desperation. Moreover, this is the man who had to withdraw from the 1988 presidential race because he plagiarized parts of a speech. Hmm…

Now, there are combover victims lurking in the Democratic and Republican parties. Thus I offer bipartisan examples of those who have embraced baldness. Senator Patrick Leahy, a fellow Democrat from Vermont, just goes bald. And he was told by Vice President Cheney to go f…k himself. For a Democrat, he might as well have been anointed king of the party.

Then there is the most famous post-9/11 combover-cum-shining-star of Rudy Giuliani. Guiliani’s combover plagued him throughout his two terms as mayor of New York City but mercifully went under the scissors after he left office.

Giuliani, before and after the combover (Amazon.com & enterstageright.com)

When he emerged before the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004 with his new ‘do, radio personality Don Imus said he looked “like a rock star.” I’ll bet nobody pushes Rudy around anymore.

And who knows, he might be president someday soon. As Biden vies for the same Pennsylvania Avenue address, he could take some grooming tips from his peers. Step one is admitting you have a problem.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.