It’s time to focus on a neglected but vital campaign issue: John McCain’s comb-over.
I can’t even begin to dissect this matter, though, without citing what has to be the definitive commentary on this often surreal hairdo. In one of his priceless sketches on NPR in New York years ago, Steve Post told of his younger, no doubt liberally fictionalized self gradually losing his hair, then gradually arranging a few more strands, just so, to hide that fact. When the follicular devastation was complete (I’m trying to get in the apocalyptic spirit of those ads bewailing the “tragedy of baldness”), and his comb-over was in full meandering glory, he became afraid to leave his apartment without getting the latest weather report on the wind speed. If the wind was especially strong, he did not dare even go to work – he had to “call in bald.”
I’m not sure if McCain’s “do” is at the mercy of wind – from all appearances, those wispy white strands are glued far more resolutely in place than his principles – but the real issue here is not the wind tolerance of this possible president (sorry to make you heart lurch in panic there), but, well, the underlying dishonesty. It starts, as hair thins, with a little lie – a few strands to cover that bare spot. But just as a person caught in a little lie might compound it with bigger and bigger lies, a man might soon be hiding acres of shiny dome with rerouted clumps from the far corners of his scalp. While McCain’s arrangement can’t hold a comb to the swirling, swooping masterworks I’ve witnessed, it certainly qualifies as a Big Lie. And if the lying starts right at the top of one’s head, were will it stop? Such a man wants to be president?
Not to mention that as a certified bald-denier, he has little chance of carrying the crucial bald vote.
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