THE DAILY BLADE: “Rudy McRomney” Wins
The first Republican primary debate in the South was staged at the University of South Carolina's Koger Center for the Arts. Here are a few highlights of the 90-minute match-up, which was sponsored by the South Carolina Republican Party and moderated by Fox News anchor Brit Hume:
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Sen. John McCain got off the first gag of the evening when he said that he has spoken with sailors who are offended by accusations of ever being drunk enough to spend money the way Congress does – but former AR Gov. Mike Huckabee got the biggest laugh of the night by noting that Congress has spent money "like John Edwards at a beauty shop." (Note, that he did not say "barber shop," or even "unisex salon.")†
Former VA Gov. Jim Gilmore got a small chuckle from the crowd with his reference to "Rudy McRomney," to underscore the point that not all the candidates on the stage could be considered true conservatives when it comes to abortion (Rudy), tax cuts (Huckabee), universal health care (former MA governor Mitt Romney) and – though he did not mention him by name, illegal immigration (McCain).†
But the evening wasn’t all fun and games. The audience groaned when Fox News White House correspondent Wendell Goler asked McCain a question about the confederate flag that was e-mailed from a viewer. And TX Rep. Ron Paul - whose vote against giving President Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq in 2002 prompted Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace to ask if he was running in the wrong party – made the only serious gaffe of the evening when he stated that the U.S. was attacked on 9/11 because, "We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East."†
Rudy’s eyes flashed in anger as he retorted: "That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11" – here, the audience erupted in cheers - and then Rudy asked Paul to "withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that." Hume gave Paul a chance to back down, but he did not take it.In The Stiletto’s opinion, Paul is finished. Rudy McRomney is still the leading candidate, and none of those in the second tier really left an impression – with the possible exception of Huckabee and CO Rep. Tom Tancredo, who drew sustained applause by noting that the candidates were debating whether water boarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" amounted to torture (in a hypothetical scenario that involved questioning captured terrorists after several suicide bombings at shopping malls) when he’d be "looking for Jack Bauer."
Pope: Pro-Abortion Catholic Pols Considered "Excommunicated"
Last week on his way to Brazil, Pope Benedict XVI stated that Catholic politicians in Mexico City who voted to legalize abortion should not take Holy Communion. After connecting the dots, a group of 18 Catholic Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives is protesting the Pope’s instruction to regard themselves as being excommunicated:
"The fact is that religious sanction in the political arena directly conflicts with our fundamental beliefs about the role and responsibility of democratic representatives in a pluralistic America - it also clashes with freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution."
The Stiletto is not Catholic, so she does not fully understand the nuances of papal pronouncements, but it seems to her that the Pope did not instruct these Representatives to compromise the U.S. Constitution. However, he did instruct them not to compromise church teachings. They are free to be secular on the job from Monday to Friday, but cannot be considered Catholics in good standing in church on Sundays.
It’s What’s Up Front That Counts
Now that beach weather is approaching, The Washington Post weighs in on "waxing, shaving, depilating, lasering men's body hair," noting that "one sign of adult male virility was chest hair" – at least, until "the early 1980s [when] the hairless chest and back was catching on with gay guys. Like earrings, it began to cross over to fashion-conscious straight men, athletes and celebrities, and then into the mainstream."
The three factors driving men to become as hairless as Chihuahuas: trendsetting gay men, smooth-skinnned celebrities on magazine covers and in the movies and pressure from girlfriends or wives - the WaPo cites a 2005 Playgirl magazine survey of 2,000 in which 47 percent approved of chest hair, 53 percent did not and 73 percent wanted a man who is "rough around the edges." Back hair, and uni-brows, were considered yucky by just about all of them.
Unless you want grooming advice from gay men or John Edwards (not that there’s anything wrong with that), listen to The Stiletto: Keep the chest hair and the treasure trail. Charlton Heston in his prime - that’s the look you wanna go for. Lots of sit-ups and push-ups wouldn’t hurt, either.
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