Hair Ball!

Manolo says, as one of the internet’s foremost authorities on the political coiffure, the Manolo has been asked to opine on the matter of the John Edwards $400 haircuts.

First allow the Manolo to begin with effusive praise for John Edwards’ hair.

“I didn’t know it would be that expensive.” — Edwards

This is the beautiful and silkily wonderful hair, the sort of marvelous, bouncy, glossy mop favored by the 1970s pop idol Bobby Sherman.

And hair of the Edwards is by far and away the John Edwards’ greatest political asset.

“But Manolo,” say the Manolo’s internet friends, “is not $400 very costly for the hair cutting?”

Perhaps many of the Manolo’s internet friends who still go to the Super-Duper Cuts, or the Floyd the Barber, do not know that the truly high quality, super fantastic hair cut now costs at least $100.

Indeed, the Manolo regularly lunches with the ladies who spend many times this amount each month on the beauty care, and they always look fabulous. And still, their expenditures are nothing when compared to what some of the stars of Hollywood are willing to pay to look even more beautiful. One need only know that the celebrity manicurist Deborah Lippman charges $1500 the day for her services to know that the $400 haircut is nowhere near the top of the market.

If you are still thinking this is too much, imagine for the second the John Edwards with the Rudy Giuliani-esque male pattern baldness, or worse, the Trump-ified man pouff, and you will see the importance of the Edwards’ do. If he is spending $400 every two weeks on this fancy haircut, the Manolo says he is certainly getting his money’s worth, so much so it would still be the bargain at three times the cost.

Of the course, one must question the political wisdom of revealing the high but necessary cost of the hair care while talking like the rabble-rousing populist, but, as the generations of slippery but charismatic Southern politicians and televangelists know, the beautiful and important southern hair can make up for many sins of the flesh and spirit.

If the Manolo were the gambling man, he would be willing to bet that other candidates are also spending many hundreds of dollars each month on their hair care.

Certainly Mitt Romney and the hair-beplugged Joe Biden have the mark of the expensive stylist beast upon them. But then neither of these politicians is so simple as to have his campaigns pay for his hair care, which means that this expense will not become the matter of the public record, which was John Edwards’ true error.

Finally, if you doubt the importance of having the best haircut possible, the Manolo reminds you of the cautionary counter example, of the politician who has never spent more then $14 on his hair cut. His name is Dennis Kucinich.