At least he's still got good hair.

Otherwise, it may be over for John Edwards, thanks to a resurrected video of him primping, too lovingly, his hair.

The video, set to the song "I Feel Pretty," has been airing on television, posted on YouTube and circulating on the Internet the past few days with potentially devastating effect for the man unflatteringly referred to as the "Breck Girl." It also illustrates the enormous power of YouTube in politics forevermore. [...]

Now, thanks to the omnipresent and unforgiving YouTube--and the incessant linkage of Web sites--John Edwards isn't just associated with hair. He is hair.

He's also a stand-in for Narcissus, mesmerized by his own beauty reflected in the small mirror he holds up to appraise himself. I feel pretty, oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and ... oh never mind.

I won't excerpt anymore from this ridiculous column, but if you have the stomach for it, read the whole thing. It really is nauseating how Ms. Parker glories in skewering John Edwards because a video showing him preparing his hair for an appearance on a national news show has been posted on YouTube. The unmitigated glee and scorn she expresses in her "hit piece" of Edwards and his hair woes really has to be read in total to be fully appreciated.

A man who has had the life John Edwards has led, who has suffered the loss of a child and the breast cancer of his beloved wife, Elisabeth, deserves better than this. Edwards has devoted his current presidential campaign promoting the most progressive agenda of any current candidate (save perhaps only Dennis Kucinich). His campaign, which includes proposals for universal health care, labor reforms, and vigorous action on global warming, deserves to be praised or criticized for his stands on those issues which are so vitally important to our nation's future. Instead we get Kathleen Parker's column, one filled with so much juvenile snark you would normally assume it had appeared in one of the more obnoxious wingnut blogs (Powerline, say or Michelle Malkin), rather than on the Op-Ed pages of our nation's newspapers.

I realize that Ms. Parker, and the newspapers who run her column, couldn't have known that the Edwards' would be facing a health crisis in their family the very day they chose to publish this tripe. Still, this is a damning example of what all too often passes for legitimate political opinion and analysis in our mainstream media. An entire column devoted to John Edwards hair? Rather sad and disgusting, isn't it?

John Edwards Kathleen Parker Washington Post Writers Group