Oh Please

I noticed in today's Post that John Edwards is getting some criticism for highlighting poverty in his campaign. Seems like some doubt his sincerity because he himself is far from poor. I really don't understand that logic. If he highlighted AIDS, would people be upset because he doesn't have it? What is he supposed to do, stay poor and powerless his whole life? (And what if he did? Would a country that worships ambition elect him President? I doubt it.)

The funny thing about poverty is that most people don't aspire to it, and those who are afflicted with it tend to spend a lot of energy trying to escape it. I do not think there is anything hypocritical about wanting other people to have the same economic security you have, and to want more, not less, Americans enjoying the benefits of the middle class. There is nothing hypocritical about wanting the same toeholds and footholds you used on your way up to be available to those behind you. It's time to dump the idea that in order to advocate for the impoverished you have to be wearing a barrel.

In the same vein, the whole $400 haircut thing is sad. Of course he has an expensive haircut. He is running for President in a country that likes its president's to come from central casting, who demand that everything about a candidate's life be "presidential." Face it, if Edwards starting going to Supercuts, the media would be all over how he looks like a hick and has an unpolished presentation and just doesn't seem ready for the job. Whaddya think Ronald Reagan just had Nancy pull out the Flobie and add a dollop of pomade?

I think alot of the outrage about expensive haircuts and the like is not so much at the candidates, it is at ourselves for being so obsessed with the superficial.