Bouffant issues

[passage from Barbara Leaming's book, Mrs. Kennedy]:
---------------------
...Jackie spent Tuesday morning with Kenneth, her New York hairdresser. Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was arriving that day....her presence at the welcoming ceremony for Selassie was obligatory. When Jack came upstairs to collect her at half past eleven, he exploded, angrily instructing her maid to see if Kenneth was still in the building. Jackie's haircut made her look far too jet-set. The hairdresser, discovered in Mary Gallagher's office on the third floor, was brought back. "What are you trying to do," Kennedy asked, "ruin my career?" Jackie's hair was promptly combed out and rearranged into a much more conservative pageboy style. When she put on a new hat, Jack erupted again. The maid was sent for a replacement.
--------------------------------

[Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History

of the Kennedy Years, by

Barbara Leaming. 2001.

The Free Press, div. / Simon

& Schuster Inc. New York,

New York]

It would be nice if our leaders were free to concentrate on important issues, which is their job, instead of having to deal with "image" issues which seem like a petty waste of time/energy, both in hindsight and in present time. (Her hair looked nice. Isn't that enough? Let it lie. Let's all go on with our day. But when you're picked on by the press about the most trivial matters, then your focus is drawn to the trivial.)

And to reiterate from yesterday's post -- that was all long before the internet.

Journalism should be professional, and civilized, and emotionally mature.

(If anyone reads that sentence and thinks I'm stupid for imagining such a thing -- well, how stupid is it to be fixated on whining about people's hairstyles, in the public press?)

Picking on people

is

not

reporting.

I'm offering that as a theory.

-30-