Partsalot
Republican Hair as a Key
to Understanding the Coming Plutocracy

by Jerden Purmort

We speak here of course of Republican men, since they are the only Republicans who really count. And we speak also only of Republican men who have partable hair. George W. Bush with his graying frizz is the exception who proves the rule. (Of Colin Powell’s tonsure nothing need be said, given his genetic predilection. Of Chief Justice Rehnquist’s embarrassing comb-over, the less said, the better.)

To understand the significance of this compulsion to part, the following must be said:

Becoming a Republican is easy. There are two ways:
1. Either you have money, or
2. You don’t have money but agree with those who do that those who have money always know best.

Since those who have money are generally groomed to within an inch of their well-ordered lives, those who don’t have money but who aspire to join the ranks of those who do quickly figure out that they too must be highly groomed.

Such a realization has many effects (not the least of which is a pocketful of credit cards charged to their limit; another effect of course is the sea of uniformly white and well-groomed faces one sees at the Republican National Convention but we don’t need to go into that here).

One of the cheaper of those effects relates directly and intimately to hair: Aspiring Repubs with any smarts study the TV news and realize that the way to go, hair-wise, is ABH, Asymmetrically Bi-partite Hair.

ABH means a good, clear part. Not down the middle but to one side. And not just any side, but the LEFT side.

Why?

Why, indeed.

Let’s see if we can find meaning is this obsessive-compulsive attempt on the part of our rich conservative brethren to look (there’s no other way to put this) BOYISH.

For one thing, there’s American folk wisdom, so-called, which in my own family I can trace back three generations. As it came down to me from my great-grandfather, it goes like this:

"There are three kinds of men you can’t trust: 1. the walleyed, 2., those who put an initial first in their signature [J. Fred Muggs instead of Jonathan F. Muggs], and 3) those who part their hair on the right or, God forbid, in the middle, or, worse yet, don’t part it at all."

Don’t ask.

Well, you can ask but it won’t do any good, because who knows where this kind of non-thinking comes from, much less how it survives and is handed down unto the nth generation.

Folk wisdom obviously doesn’t get us very far in understanding the photos above.

Where then can we turn?

To the same place we always turn for help with life’s deepest question: the inscrutable East.

Eastern hair being largely unpartable, at least not without application of quantities of gel that would disturb even gel-master Tom DeLay (see photo above), Eastern men adopt another strange, cosmetic physical affectation: the long fingernail on the left pinkie. Long as in half an inch.

Is this intended as an unconcealed weapon in one of the more obscure karate moves? No. The elongated pinkie nail is an outward and visible sign to indicate that you are above doing manual labor and that you are therefore a gentleman presumably of some affluence. In other words, the Oriental equivalent of a Republican.

Republican men, being homophobic through and through, avoid any hint of femininity like the plague. Thus a long fingernail is out of the question. What to do? How to show that one either belongs to the moneyed ruling class or that one aspires strongly to belong?

Make-up? No way.

Leisure attire? No way (the Uniform—black suit, white shirt, cinched-up tie—is de rigueur.

Let’s see. How about if we divide the hair in a wholly unnatural perfectly straight line over to one side of the head and then plaster the hair flat onto the scalp? Sounds pretty good. You certainly won’t see members of the underclass doing that.

Yep, that’s it. ABH, the good old Republican Part, is like a flashing neon sign that says, I’ve got it and you don’t.