Friday, April 20, 2007

The equivalence of haircuts and war



An interesting comparison between the New York Times and the Financial Times. The former, a very serious newspaper, gives another go-round to crumbs from the Drudge table -- that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards got an expensive haircut in Beverly Hills. Perhaps the NYT is unaware that candidates spend a fair bit of time on television, with the camera mostly pointed at their heads.

Then, after referencing another hoary chestnut of the right, a Bill Clinton haircut also in Los Angeles, an editor must have asked the reporter, Adam Nagourney, for a balancing story. So he offers this one about John McCain, which he presumably also saw on the Internets --

Senator John McCain, a Republican hopeful, was captured on camera in South Carolina on Wednesday when he was asked about sending “an air-mail message to Teheran.”

“Remember that old Beach Boys song ‘Bomb Iran?’ ” Mr. McCain asked and burst out with the first three notes of “Barbara Ann,” with slightly different words. “Bomb, bomb, bomb,” he sang.


Proceeding now to Friday's Financial Times, we find a longer story, only devoted to the McCain gaffe, which does after all pertain to desire of a presidential candidate to start yet another war in the Middle East. The FT reporter even did some actual research about McCain's improv, noting that it's a well-known parody that first circulated in 1979 -- something that Nagourney couldn't be bothered to look up.

One possibility is that Nagourney's reporting is driven by hair envy, because compared to John Edwards, he (seen above) doesn't have very much it. It's good to know that the political season is in the hands of such grounded people.

UPDATE: Nagourney is also peddling the hair tale on the NYT's politics blog, and the Times just can't help itself -- an entire Maureen Dowd column about the hair.

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