"I don’t think we should talk about Lincoln’s underwear..."

"It’s not appropriate for someone so iconic. Even in the bedroom, Lincoln is never shown in his pajamas. He’s in his shirt and pants."

Joanna Johnston, movie costume designer.

***

"But even the President of the United States/Sometimes must have to stand naked."

Bob Dylan.

***

"How many Bob Dylan songs have the word 'naked' and how many of them can you name?" I challenge Meade with a Bob Dylan test, as I tend to do when I've done a search at bobdylan.com (as I did for the "It's Alright Ma" quote, above).

Meade immediately says "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked," then none of the others — not even "You see somebody naked and you say who is that man?" — and makes 2 wrong guesses:

MEADE: "'Mr. Tambourine Man'... just to dance beneath the naked sky..."

ME: "That's 'diamond sky.'"

MEADE: "The one where the farmer is chasing him out of his house."

ME: "'Motorpsycho Nightmare?' No."

In "Motorpsycho Nightmare," Bob Dylan is just trying to get some sleep — no sign that he's sleeping naked — when Rita — "Lookin’ just like Tony Perkins" (i.e., the murderer in "Psycho") importunes him to take a shower. He's freaked out: "Oh, no! no! I’ve been through this [movie] before." Afraid of getting knifed to death, but unwilling to run off unless her father (the farmer) throws him out (because he promised the farmer he'd milk the cows in the morning), his sees his only option as saying "something to strike him very weird." What he says is: "I like Fidel Castro and his beard."



Beards. Fidel Castro made a beard as off limits to an American president — in spite of Lincoln — as Hitler made the mustache. And here I want to go back to that "Becoming Adolf" article by Rich Cohen that were were talking about a couple days ago:

[Y]ou could not wear any kind of mustache after [WWII], because, running from Hitler, you might run into Stalin. Hitler plus Stalin ended the career of the mustache in Western political life. Before the war, all kinds of American presidents wore a mustache and/or beard. You had John Quincy Adams, with his muttonchops...



You had Abe Lincoln, whose facial hair...



... like his politics, was the opposite of Hitler's: beard full, lip bare. You had James Garfield, who had the sort of vast rabbinical beard into which whole pages of legislation could vanish.



You had Rutherford B. Hayes...



Grover Cleveland...



... and Teddy Roosevelt, whose asthma and elephant gun were just a frame for his mustache.



You had William Howard Taft — the man wore a Walrus!



After the war, the few American politicians who still wore a mustache were those who had made their name before Hitler and so had been grandfathered in. Like Thomas Dewey.



Dewey was Eliot Spitzer. He was a prosecutor in New York in the 1930s (and later governor), the only guy with the guts to take on the Mob. For Dewey, the rise of Hitler was a fashion disaster. Because Dewey wore a neat little mustache. Dewey ran for president twice — losing to F.D.R., losing to Truman. In my opinion, without the mustache, the headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune (Dewey Defeats Truman) turns true. One of the few prominent American politicians to wear facial hair in recent memory is Al Gore, who grew a Grizzly Adams beard after he lost to George Bush, in 2000. The appearance of this beard was taken to mean either (1) Gore would never again run for office, or (2) Gore had gone completely mental.



The decision to grow a mustache or a beard is all by itself reason to keep a man away from the nuclear trigger.

Are we going to decide who deserves out trust based on they look? Come on, Abe. Lose the beard. Okay.

Pick one:

"The military judge supervising the trial of accused Ft. Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was removed from the case Monday..."

"... with the military's highest appeals court ruling that his 'duel of wills' with Hasan over the defendant's beard gave the appearance of bias."

"Although the military judge here stated that [Hasan's] beard was a 'disruption,' there was insufficient evidence on this record to demonstrate that [Hasan's] beard materially interfered with the proceedings," the unsigned ruling said.

"Taken together.... the decision to remove [Hasan] from the courtroom, the contempt citations and the decision to order [Hasan's] forcible shaving in the absence of any command action to do the same could leave an objective observer to conclude that the military judge was not impartial."

The appeals court did not specifically rule on Hasan's claim that his beard was protected under freedom of religion.

The Amish hair- and beard-cutting trial: Is it a hate crime...

... if they felt compassion and wanted to bring strayed Amish "back into the fold"?

"I assume the one without the Civil War sideburns is the woman?"

A comment at Smoking Gun.

And by the way, if you're planning your transgressive day in the park, read this first.

You also can't be beaming ear to ear like John Edwards, looking like a total prick for making light of a grave situation. You certainly can't have some gonzo grin like you're still high... No, you need something in between. You need the smirk. Look at Samantha Ronson, Nicole Richie, or David Bowie. They say, "Yeah, I know I'm in the clink, but I'm still awesome and I'm going to get out of this, and I did, in fact, shoot the sheriff." That's what you want: bemused badassery, a photo that says you know you're going to get off because you're famous, pretty, and, perhaps, innocent.

"McCain mistakenly refers to Romney as Obama."

Oops. Just slur your words and say "Obamney" and maybe people won't notice.

Hey, am I the only one who thinks Rick Santorum looks like Jerry Seinfeld... especially when he's brightly lit from above and standing in front of a wall so that his head casts a shadow that makes it look like he's got his hair in a mullet?

And was Meade the only one who looked at this picture the NYT chose to illustrate its article about that new book about Barack-and-Michelle and thought the shadows made it look — especially with that black bow tie — like he had an Abe Lincoln hat-and-beard?

And remember 3 years ago, when Obama took office and all these commentators were comparing him to Lincoln? What the hell was that about? Before he did anything, he was like Lincoln... and then he won the Nobel Prize.

But you know who's not all there? McCain. That old guy must be senile. He said Obama when he meant Romney.

Mullet arrested in haircut attack.

It's not funny.

The problem of Amish-on-Amish violence.

The Daily Mail reports:

Men and sometimes women from a group of families disavowed by mainstream Amish have terrorized a half-dozen or more fellow Amish.

In Holmes County, a group of 27 men allegedly burst into a home and cut the hair off men and women inside and cut the beards off the men.

Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly told The Wheeling News Register the victims included a 13-year-old girl and a 74-year-old man....

Detectives in the area were said to be gathering evidence from buggies and horse trailers believed to have been used in connection with the assaults.

So... they're looking for hair?

Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said there was a similar incident in Trumbull County three weeks ago.

He said hair from the victims was brought back to Jefferson County to prove to Sam Mullet, the bishop of the Bergholz group, that Mullet's orders concerning the hair cutting was being followed.

I know what you're thinking: A guy named Mullet wants hair cuts? But if you click the link and find his picture, you'll see it's business on top, party underneath.

"At the dinner table, Phil sits between his wife and his girlfriend, across from the kids."

"He's a bus driver with an effusive personality and a stubbly goatee."

Polyamory hits Madison, Wisconsin.

During the course of conversation, he'll reach over and sweep a strand of hair behind Grace's ear or nuzzle his wife Katie after a joke. Their 9- and 11-year old boys babble cheerily about school. Their 17-year-old daughter Vionna comes home from work partway through the meal and pulls up a chair. She darts up to her room at one point and brings down a present for Grace, a pretty glass vial of perfume. Between all parties, there's a natural and easy vibe.

Oh, good Lord.