There's a Lollipop Born Every Minute

I'm certain that the Great Referee in the Sky will award this post a 15-yard penalty for "piling on," but I can't resist the melee beckoning me away from my slumber on the bench. Now that Will & Grace has been cancelled, the vaudevillian act known as the Katherine Harris for Senate Traveling Circus seems to be the only consistent venue for high camp and misdemeanors.

Nearly all of Harris's campaign workers have walked off the job, and now they're falling all over each other in their attempts to be the bitchiest ex-staffer in Orlando. Here, for example, is a delightful excerpt from an article in USA Today:

Pollster Ed Goeas says he left because "I kept giving her advice that she chose not to take." That includes his final words of wisdom, which were: "Get out."

Subtle, that one. The article also lists a number of Harris's pitfalls, including:

Her appearance. Harris likes tight clothing. Jim Dornan, her former campaign manager, compares it to debutante attire. "It's not the type of dress a U.S. senator should or would wear," he says. She wore a tight peach sweater to Red Belly Day, a festival named for a local fish, and sucked on a lollipop. "Oh, no," aide Brian Brooks said as a photographer snapped pictures.

My heart goes out to this poor Brian Brooks. He was probably looking for fame and fortune in politics, and it all gets flushed with a sucker.

Now, generally speaking, I think that the media and the punditry hold women running for office to dress standards that are sexist, unfair, and all the obligatory et ceteras. But, in this case . . . what was I saying? Ah, the hell with it. Harris's fashion faux pas wouldn't even pass muster in a late-night drag show on Fat Tuesday. After all, in the other Vitamin C-enriched State, Governor Ahnold had the good sense never to appear at his campaign fundraisers in Speedos left over from his bodybuilding days. (And, is it just me, or does Ms. Harris look more and more like the spawn of Cruella deVil and Michael Jackson?)

The USA Today article notes that Harris's campaign has alienated nearly every GOP official in the state--but they can't find anyone willing to face her in the primary. Getting in the spirit, the blog Florida Politics quotes former Senator Bob Graham enjoying the last laugh after hearing about

the "stunning development" of Gov. Jeb Bush and other top Republicans unsuccessfully trying to force Katherine Harris out of the Senate race. "My goodness," says Graham with mock seriousness. "Republicans have been acting -- dare I say it -- like Democrats."

I don't want to seem too cruel gloating over Harris's humiliation, however. So, in the interest of being fair and balanced, I conducted a grueling and desperate search on the Internet for an apparently endangered species: a diehard Katherine Harris supporter. I found an intrepid and stalworth soul, a God-fearing blogger who insists that "Katherine Harris has the interest of Floridians at heart." And he seems qualified to know, since he lives right next-next-door.

In the state of Tennessee.