A DILEMMA. I suppose some small part of me should think, in regard to the latest idiotic non-story from the internet's premier source for political haircut gossip, that if they're going to write these kinds of stories about Democrats at least they should write them about Republicans too. But, really, I can't; all you can say about the shocking news that political figures actually apply makeup so they look good on TV and that this isn't actually free is that The Politico remains an abject embarrassment. And if this were just a problem of one bad internet magazine that would be one thing, but it's much deeper. We should remind ourselves again that an election campaign that led to a disastrous war, a massive deficit, a significant rightward shift in the federal courts, and on and on was discussed largely in terms of these ridiculous non-issues, and the very symbol of this tendency remains safely in the op-ed pages of the New York Times eight years later to further debase this country's political discourse. --Scott Lemieux
