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.

Bob: “Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.”

Peter: “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been missing it, Bob.”

I can’t say that I’ve really been straining myself these last few days. As a senior on my last-ever first day of school, I had no class. And I don’t have any Friday. I had class today, but ended early and left with no homework. So, I sat and read the Washington Post for a while. In my own defense, I made an earnest attempt to be enterprising this afternoon by trekking to Steiny-D for a coursepack, but it wasn’t even ready yet. Clearly, this school wants me to be the prophet of un-productivity.

Later in the afternoon, I took myself to the benches outside Van Pelt to enjoy the nice weather. As I sat aloof and somewhat giddy in the bountiful sunshine, demurely sipping my green tea latte, I was yanked from my reverie by the racket of clodhoppers pounding the cement before me. Observe the scene by VP at roughly 4:35 pm on Thursday (it’s not very convincing from my sputtering digicam, but hopefully you get the idea):

I looked up and thought “Man. Sucks to be you.”

With my own envious schedule aside–I am, mind you, still enrolled in five courses–I was floored by, almost offended by, the startling number of students stampeding into the library after only two days of classes.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that most people have assignments to complete and don’t want to squander the early-semester surge of enthusiasm. But enough work to sit in Rosengarten at 5 pm on a Thursday evening? Come now! The weather is gorgeous and the lines inside the Penn Bookstore are far too long to bother with buying books now. Enjoy the weekend. You’ll fall behind soon enough, anyway.