And then there's John Edwards

Around here we have a couple of sayings for folks like John Edwards. My favorite is "He's full of more crap than a Christmas goose." Looks like the Yankees are catching on to his high crap quotient:

James Pinkerton at Newsday - Edwards Brings His Cornpone to the North

Part of the reason for Southern effectiveness, I think, is condescension: Northerners are inordinately impressed when a Southerner can finish a sentence without tobacco spittle running down his chin. Another reason is gratitude: Northerners, expecting to hear an accent such as that of Renée Zellweger in "Cold Mountain," are unduly happy when they can understand what a Southerner is saying.

Amid all this cross-cultural cluelessness, a Southerner who can play the "Dixie card" gets extra credit for being "brave" enough to talk about race. Here, at a Unitarian Church in this chilly seacoast town, Edwards told a lily-white audience, "They say I shouldn't talk about race." The North Carolina senator never bothered to identify "they," leaving his listeners to imagine that some cynical political boss somewhere was threatening him with doom if he mentioned civil rights.

Having set up this strawiest of straw men, Edwards then knocked it over: "We should not only talk about race," he thundered, "we have a moral responsibility to talk about race." The crowd cheered; nobody seemed to notice that Edwards never did, in fact, say anything about race - other than that he would talk about it.

A lot more goodness by following the link.

And here's an Edwards item I had completely missed - Edwards gets a big-boy cut:

Just two weeks before the Jan. 18 caucuses, Iowa voters had pretty much decided John Edwards wasn't their guy for president.
...
Then Edwards surged and the pundits scrambled to find an explanation: his positive campaign, his centrist policies, his working-class roots. All plausible reasons. But they have missed something crucial.

He changed his hair.

Seriously. Look at pictures of him before the New Year and then leading up to the Iowa vote. That boyish swoop of chestnut over his forehead, sometimes nearly touching his eyebrows or settling on his collar, is gone, replaced by a slight wave that leaves his forehead exposed. It's a subtle change, but an important one. With a few snips of a stylist's clippers, Edwards took a step toward neutralizing one of his greatest weaknesses.

"He went from a boy to a grown man in one sweep," observed Roi Parker, who owns R.O.I. Salon in Raleigh, where the new coif is a favorite topic of conversation. "He went from fun, free, fashion-forward hair to in-the-office, behind-the-desk, running-for-something hair."

Woohoo! Follow the link for some snaps.