And John Edwards spends what would be close to two week's income for a minimum wage worker on a haircut. I hold no particular love for the GOP, but if you're going to pick on the eccentricities of the wealthy, you'll have to include pretty much all the Democratic candidates as well, and I'm sure it won't be hard to Google up a lot of examples of equally ridiculous or oblivious activity, especially from those who, like Giuliani, are part of the nouveau riche. That's one of the major issues with politics today – to play the game you either have to be independently wealthy yourself or be beholden to someone (or some group) who can provide the necessary cash to ante up. As F. Scott Fitzgerald noted long ago, "The rich are not like you and me.", and that's part of the problem.

Oh, hell, she can buy all the seats on the plane for all I care. It's her money. Or Rudy's. Or the City of New York's. At any rate, it's not my money.

I'm just laughing because the faux-populism of the GOP over the past years has come to this. Remember when Bush was the candidate you were supposed to want to sit down and have a beer with? Speaking as a then-Texas voter, all I could see was a beady eyed overgrown fratboy that I didn't want to share a time zone with, let alone a bar table.

Edwards, whatever else you think about him, seems to have a genuine concern and focus on issues of economic class inequity. That handbag story isn't about wealth, per se, it's about a sense of entitlement which often (but not always) accompanies wealth.

Edited at 2007-12-02 04:50 am (UTC)

There's a lot of that sense of entitlement going around. Edwards is running as a pseudo-populist, yet was oblivious enough to not be aware of how that haircut would look, despite his views on class issues, because he felt that he was entitled to it. As I said, many of the same things can be said, in exactly the same way, about most of the Democratic candidates. I think we're better off dealing with issues than poking fun, no matter how much momemtary pleasure the latter may give.

If I don't poke fun, who will I laugh at?

Oh, I've taken my share of potshots (possibly more than my share), but this particular one just seems on ground that's a little shaky. I just think your brush is a tad bit wide.

But elections are not -about- issues. They're about personalities and appearances.

However, John Edwards was not embezzling from any government.

Giuliani didn't spend his own money -- though he may have thought of NYC as belonging to him.

Exactly. Ordering NYPD officers to drive his girlfriend around town (or drive her friends and family when she wasn't even with them), or to drive her 130 miles to her parents' house in Pennsylvania, or to walk her dog, for god's sakes, is abuse of power.

Why the media hasn't sent him packing is beyond me.[1]

I imagine the NYPD waiting outside her parents' home while Rudy is attending 9/11 memorials, and I can't imagine why anyone would trust him as the C-in-C.

[1] Kidding! Of course I know why they haven't sent him packing.

Today I was reading a NewsMax bulletin that talked about the charges against Giuliani in regard to using thousands of NYC tax dollars for personal use...but was that the big thrust of the story? Nope, the big thrust was "OMG, was the hand of Hillary Clinton" (that's the way they put it) "involved in this information coming out???"