What Really Matters: Hair Wars

News bulletin. In 2006, Hillary Clinton paid nearly $3000 to hair stylist Isabelle Goetz ($1500 in April of 2006 and $1000 in May, plus another $442 in expenses). Add to that the $3,000 Clinton paid to Hollywood makeup artist Barbara Lacy, and you'll see why how fast the Clinton campaign has burned through it's mega millions is a bigger story than what they've raised. John Edwards has gotten expensive haircuts, too, and today the AJC is devoting ink to a haircut he got in Atlanta in 2004. Now there's some heavy-duty reporting.

I personally think that we have more important things to discuss, like a President who has commuted the sentence of a man convicted of obstruction of justice, or the soldiers dying daily in Iraq while both our President and our Congress do nothing to end the war, or in Georgia, a young man who is sitting in prison for ten years for having consensual oral sex, but, for those of you who think that what a candidate pays for a haircut is really much more important than a substantive discussion of the issues, here's the breaking news: None of the folks running for President are paupers. The Clinton's have a net worth of about 50 million dollars. Most, if not all, of the viable candidates are millionaires, but the only one who is speaking consistently about poverty and what we need to do help, for instance, the one in five children in Georgia who live in poverty is John Edwards.

That Hillary Clinton described the expense of her hair stylist and make-up artist as "media production expense" really gets at the core issue. We have devolved into a nation of drones who watch while Paris Hilton is released from jail, noting what outfit she was wearing but failing to notice that she spent more time in jail than Scooter Libby. The Republicans are salivating at the opportunity to choose Fred Thompson, you know, the nice D.A. from Law and Order, the B-list actor with the thin resume' who is a walking subliminal cue that will make the music from the show go "Da Dum" in voters minds as they check off his name on the ballot. After all, who's going to protect us better than the nice D.A.? This is what we've become.

Look, I could not care less what Hillary and John spend on hair cuts and stylists. The fact is this is a media-driven race, and these are rich people. It's not Edwards' (or Clinton's) personal cash that will help end poverty- it is their ability as President to impact policy. But, hey, the GOP is counting on us to keep feeding the "Reality-TV, Don't-Make-Me-Think" media machine. Wouldn't want to disappoint, would we?

This is cross-posted at Georgia Women Vote!