And speaking of headline writers
A pal in the Old North State alerted to me the latest at The Raleigh News and Observer (The Nobs to its fans). To give you some perspective, the Nobs always has an air of NY Times wannabees trying to promulgate their stylish values to the benighted yokels of North Carolina. It reads less like a newspaper and more like a checklist of the day's leftoid talking points with a local flavor.

Anyhow, the Nobs powers-that-be apparently decided it was time for some extensive puffery about talking hair-do, Sen. John Edwards, so they kicked off an "in-depth" 4 part series on the Breck Boy. In the dead tree version they had 5"x8" photos of him on the campaign trail above the fold on the front of this and last Sunday's paper. Must have been no other news! You can get some of the flavor from their web site today and the full series is online in a special section.

As far as the articles go, here's the gist - "He's a swell man of the people." Zzzzzz. But the real question is, who's writing the headlines and subheads? A teenage girl with a crush on Johnny?

The first episode was: Easy smile hides iron will to win: First-term senator forges ahead at an unlikely pace as he sets his sights on the presidency. The pace is unlikely all right - he's battling Al Sharpton at the bottom of the rankings. And the "easy smile"? Someone tell 'em how to spell sleazy.

Later in the week, of course, Edwards withdrew from the North Carolina Senate race amidst the grumbling of the party faithful that he was going to lose that as well as his presidential bid. So after a little scrambling at the Nobs, here's the title for the final episode - Beyond senate, he races at Bush: Some call it arrogance, but his instincts tell him the time is right to push for the presidency. Sheesh, why don't they just run a closeup of his butt?

And why don't they save a whole lot of column inches and just hire Scott Ott? - Sen. Edwards Announces Retirement from Politics.