HDTV and the female candidate.

My son Christopher writes that he watched last night's debate on high definition TV, and:

Hillary Clinton's lipstick looked different in HD. It was kind of weird. Her lipstick looked overly glossy and stuck out, almost a little garish. You can tell it's sort of like stage makeup. When she first came on her lipstick actually popped out in a Rocky Horror-ish way. That was my first impression when she was in close-up. I mean, and it looked good on regular TV but looked way overdone on HD.

He likes Hillary Clinton, by the way.

It seems that there is a problem with doing a woman's makeup so that it works on both regular TV and HDTV.

Actually, I would have thought HDTV would be a bigger problem for the men, because you don't want to think of them as wearing any makeup at all. Remember when we noticed Al Gore's makeup?

In his first debate with George W. Bush, Gore appeared in orange makeup applied thickly to cover a sunburn. He looked awful. Commentators compared him to Lurch from The Addams Family, "Herman Munster doing a bad Ronald Reagan impression," and "a big, orange, waxy, wickless candle." One columnist wrote that "it looked like he melted down orange circus peanuts and then asked Tammy Faye for a 'light' dusting." San Francisco Examiner television critic Tim Goodman landed one of the most quoted blows: "If you'd stuck him in a push-up bra and a sequin dress and had him sing show tunes, he'd have carried San Francisco in a landslide."

The vice president became The Man Who Wears Too Much Makeup. The label has endured as a trope of late-night comedians - "If Al Gore took off half his makeup and gave it to Warren Christopher, they'd both look a lot better," said Jay Leno... - and as color for political journalists. This isn't just fun at the vice president's expense. Commentators treat Gore's pancake problem as if it has deeper significance. It makes him seem bumbling, unmanly, and, most of all, phony.

Poor Al Gore. So it was a sunburn that led to his losing the election? Is that why he's so angry about global warming?

Just kidding, anti-Althousians. Stand clear of the vortex.

The subject is here is: makeup, HDTV, and the possible disparate impact on the female candidate. And Al Gore. You can kick him around a little if you must. About makeup. Or... whatever.