"Hoft gets this through Instadouche and, unsurprisingly, Ann Althouse, who has been looking at pictures again, something that never ends well..."

"... as also of course happens when she 'thinks things' and then 'writes them down' and 'alerts the public as to her thoughts.'"

Heh. I got FireDogLake writing in the anti-Althousiana genre.

ADDED: I guess Firedoglake is flouting the "civility" bullshit that's been bandied about lately.

AND: Here's the link to Hoft, where there is a nice juxtaposition of photographs along with my quote about the President's hair color change. (Let's call it his "mood hair.")

I think it's important to talk about the way politicians use their visual image in communicating their message. Clearly, we talk about female politicians' hair all the time. It is different to talk about men's hair, of course, because men aren't supposed to care much about their hair.

It's part of the conventional manly image not to pay attention to hair, and when a man runs afoul of that image, he gives his opponents raw material that... well, that can make a hilarious video. (That video was much funnier before the pricks that own the "Theme from Rawhide" asserted their candyass rights.)

AND: Here's how female politicians are treated when they change their hair:

"Her smash-mouthed assault on His deity, sovereignty and infallibility brought more GodSmacks upon her..."

If you're trying to fathom the twisted reasoning behind picketing Elizabeth Edwards' funeral (by the Westboro Baptist Church), the hateful text is here.

Elizabeth Edwards is dying.

And she says a few words via Facebook:

She did not mention Mr. Edwards in her message on Monday.

“There are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human,” Mrs. Edwards wrote. “But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”

She did not apologize to us for participating in the deceit perpetrated by John Edwards, which skewed the 2008 Democratic primaries.

ADDED: Death don't have no mercy.

The John Edwards bio is "an extraordinary story filled with motivations, decisions and consequences that would have lit Shakespeare up."

Aaron Sorkin is making a movie of Andrew Young's "The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edwards's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down."

Would the John Edwards story "have lit Shakespeare up"?
	Yes. John Edwards is a grand tragic hero with fascinating flaws.
	Yes. Shakespeare loved to apply his gifts to tacky, melodramatic tales.
	No. Shakespeare was too high class for that sort of muck.
	No. John Edwards didn't reach a high enough height for Shakespeare to care about his fall.
pollcode.com free polls

"I followed my heart, and I believe it was the right thing to do, which is weird — I get how weird that is..."

"... because I didn’t make a commitment to Elizabeth. I wasn’t the one lying, like, to her, and I was supporting him in his process, and his intentions never wavered. I knew that he wanted — he just had a really unique way of getting there — to live a life of truth."

Rielle Hunter, being weird, on "Oprah."

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

If she would have, like, made a commitment to Elizabeth, then it wouldn't have been weird.

Like, she could have made a commitment to respect Elizabeth's marriage to John? - it would have been, like, a really unique way of getting there? Getting to, you know, that space of living a life of truth?

But it wouldn't have been weird. It would have been just, you know, like a really really real... process.

Oh! It's Everybody Talk Like Rielle Hunter Day!

"I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity."

"I didn't feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoken, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him. Also, it is not my desire to teach my daughter that when Mommy's upset with Daddy, you take matters into your own hands and fix Daddy's mistakes. Which I view as one of the biggest problems in all female-and-male relationships."

Rielle Hunter will not emasculate John Edwards. And she will not fix his mistakes. Because daughter Quinn must learn about the problems of the female-and-male relationship. So never never never no no no do not emasculate your little Johnnikins.

A grand jury is about to indict John Edwards?

That's what the National Enquirer says, and we should've listened to them last time.

Newsweek loves Rielle Hunter.

A ridiculous puff piece by Jonathan Darman. It's called — I am not kidding — "The Quiet Dignity of Rielle Hunter." It ends:

That's not to say we've heard the last of Rielle Hunter. She is too rich and intriguing a character for her story to end here. Eventually, she will talk to someone. When she does the inevitable interview, the questions will be all about the affair: Did John say he loved her? Did she love John? Did she know it was wrong to go after a married man? But I hope someone thinks to ask her about what came after: What was the strength that kept her head down through the years? And why is that strength so elusive to the rest of the world?

Ha ha ha. Well, I've already written about Darman's writing about Hunter — back in August 2008. It ends:

Our adorable reporter tries to do his job as he teeters between falling for her and figuring out what is going on.

"I'm doing fairly well for a grandmother who had a monkey tangled up in her hair last month on a ghat in Varanasi at sunset."

"Back home again now, I can report that in the midst of the zap that is India, with its heartbreaking, gorgeous, hallucinatory, dazzling, kaleidoscopic, mind-blowing grandeur and loud reality -- a place where having a monkey's hand trapped in your dreadlocks is pretty par for the course -- I came to three decisions about my own country."

I didn't know Americans were still trekking to India to learn about themselves and attain enlightenment and so forth, but let's see what 3 things Ann Lamott figured out. It's not: 1. India does not exist for the purpose of providing psychedelic experiences to Baby Boomers, 2. White ladies should not affect dreadlocks, and 3. I have had it with these motherfucking monkeys in my motherfucking hair.

It's:

1. "If the people on the streets of India can keep their humor and good nature, I can keep mine."

2. "[F]orgive John Edwards."

3. "I am going to trust this guy Obama."

I kid you not. Those are the 3 things Anne Lamott discovered in India, and I am definitely — without even going to India — keeping my sense of humor about that.

6 reasons not to give a Pulitzer Prize to the National Enquirer.

Rebutted.

Why didn't Rielle Hunter have an abortion?

Because she thought that baby was “some kind of golden child, the reincarnated spirit of a Buddhist monk who was going to help save the world.”

There is, you know, a John Edwards sex tape, and Edwards "is physically very striking, in a certain area."

"Everyone who sees it says 'whoa.'"

"I am Quinn's father... It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me."

Yes, a lot of things were wrong, including that, but is there one shred of evidence that you'd admit to any wrongdoing before everybody already knew about it? I thought not? So why are you still getting on TV? Go away! Do penance for your sins... somewhere where we don't see you. And maybe one day, you will deserve forgiveness.

Does "Game Changer" get to the heart of the question "Just how wacky is Elizabeth?"

Mickey Kaus wants to know.

True, she's depicted as a snob in heavy denial who flies into inappropriate rages. But is that all? If she's wacky enough, remember, Edwards' decision to take up with another woman may be more explicable, if not excusable. ...

"She called her spouse a 'hick' in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks."

"One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. 'Oh, he doesn’t read books,' she said. 'I’m the one who reads books.'"

I thought she was dying.

How terribly inconvenient for poor John.

Who brings their baby along to a court apppearance?

Only Rielle Hunter.

It was not immediately clear why Hunter brought the little girl to court.

Ha ha. It was clear. Just not immediately.

ADDED: Chip Ahoy says "I sense even the kid knows":

It's me and Michelle Goldberg, blabbing about the governors Palin and Sanford.

On the new Bloggingheads.

Special Sex and Palin Edition

Is Sarah Palin insane?
Examining her motivations
Edwards’s sex tape vs. Sanford’s Appalachian hike
Mark Sanford’s an adulterous flake. But he’s so romantic!
Is Palin the next Obama?
Analyzing why Michelle HATES Palin

Hunter was hired to make videos of Edwards, "but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform."

The Daily News gossip column quipped about the report that there's a John Edwards/Rielle Hunter sex tape.

This sets Popehat off, riffing wildly on sexual wordplay, for example, here:

This brings us, of course, to pirates. How did it come to pass that “to take one’s foot” became an idiom for orgasm? Prior to the Revolution, and therefore prior to the metric system, the French used measurements akin to the imperial system. When corsairs went to divide their spoils after a stint of rapine, each would naturally demand his portion of the whole. The allotted part, by convention, was a foot-high mound of booty. No, really.

Taking his foot of gold was the pirate’s pleasure. Since not everything that happens in Tortuga stays in Tortuga, taking the foot gradually became anyone’s pleasure in anything... And just as a noble, sexy, piraty bit of bawd has by now been stripped bare by its broad overuse in French, so too has the vitality of allusiveness in English suffered under the weight of too popular a press. We’ve seen enough; it’s time to close your eyes and think of English.

Maybe you'd better go over there and see how this all fits together.

"He's squooshy in love with her, quite obviously."

Writes John Stodder in yesterday's Mark Sanford thread:

He was obviously dumped by the woman, who has more common sense than he does right now. He'll wake up in a few weeks or months and go, "what the hell did I just do?" But as of now, he is still immersed in the psychosis of mad love.

I don't think the gal pals of Clinton or Edwards were ever anything more than pleasant vanities and erotic vessels. I get the feeling that Ensign is a creepy power addict and bonking his aide's wife was just a way of asserting his alpha status, his right to humiliate the men who serve him.

This guy, on the other hand, seems to have gone over the moon. His inner self at war with his stated convictions. He's like the professor in "The Blue Angel," desperate to give up all that he earned just to be a clown in his beloved's circus.

Have you been there yourself, John? Have any of you?