Well, Well, Well

Mitt Romney's been to the beauty salon too. And he charged his campaign for it.

Romney recorded $300 in payments to a California company that describes itself as “a mobile beauty team for hair, makeup and men’s grooming and spa services.”

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the payments — actually two separate $150 charges — were for makeup, though he said the former Massachusetts governor had only one session with Hidden Beauty of West Hills, Calif.

In an age where our politicians are actors, these are legitimate campaign expenses, actually. It's just that Romney - who used the John Edwards haircut situation repeatedly as a device for mockery - is just the rankest of hypocrites here. With the difference, of course, being that Edwards talks about and shows concern for poverty while being rich, while Romney doesn't give a crap about the poor while being rich, which apparently is more "consistent."

Can't wait for Mike Huckabee to unfurl his line about how "the government is spending money like Mitt Romney in a beauty shop."

UPDATE: Ezra:

To say this explicitly, it's okay to be rich if you act rich. The amount of flak Edwards is getting for being both wealthy and concerned with the working class versus the amount of criticism Giuliani and Romney are getting for being uber-rich and utterly unconcerned with issue of class and wage fairness is telling. The press doesn't care if you're loaded and out-of-touch, or self-interested. But to both make a lot of money and think other people should make relatively more money? Why, that's-that's-that's-that's hypocrisy* is what that is!

Exactly right. And the media can only see it that way because THEY are part of the same privileged class, or they at least like to think of themselves that way. This Leslie Wayne from the New York Times is the beat reporter for John Edwards, she writes the bulk of Edwards stories for the paper, and she flat-out doesn't like him. She writes paragraphs like this:

Mr. Edwards has made poverty his signature issue, a topic that stands in sharp contrast to his own $30 million net worth and which set him up for ridicule when it became public that he had paid $400 for a haircut.

There's actually no contrast there. You can have a net worth of $30 million dollars and care about people who don't make $30 million dollars. In fact, you can set up organizations and give speeches and raise awareness to promote the goal of allowing people who don't have $30 million dollars the opportunities to lead a contented life. That isn't a contrast whatsoever. Why does Leslie Wayne hate people with money who actually want to allow the unwashed masses the same opportunity? Her latest article on Edwards' antipoverty tour covers it strictly from a political perspective, as if he's somehow pimping poor people to gather votes (because everyone knows that the way to gain power in America is to talk about the poor, right?)

Here's a roundup of what Edwards is actually DOING, without the biases inherent in the corporate media reporting.