What Do Senator Barack Obama and Graydon Carter Have In Common?





(image via wonkette)

What do Senator Barack Obama and Vanity Fair's architectonically-haired E. Graydon Carter have in common? Both, to be sure, are media animals. And both, clearly, exhibit sartorial elegance (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). But more to the point: Both -- sotto voce -- smoke (Averted Gaze). From Jake Tapper via Wonkette:

"Last August, I ran into Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol.

"This was before the Obama surge, before he had omnipresent Secret Service agents, back when you might see him strolling solo.

"We chatted for a second, mainly about the Pakistan speech he'd recently given and about how the media had covered it. He was in good spirits.

"As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes.

"Obama ran off before I could ask him if he'd just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign.

"They denied it. He'd quit months before, in February, they insisted. He chewed nicorette.

"But I knew what I'd smelled and I asked his campaign to double-check and to ask him if he'd had a cigarette."

Further sleuthing by Tapper uncovered, brutally, The Horrible Truth. The Senator from Illinois is a cigarette smoker. We have no doubts that the desperate Clinton campaign will find some way to beat Obama with a bushel of the goddam tobacco within the next news cycle.

Parallel to that, Liz Smith, who usually writes, crankily, about old Hollywood stars (and why ain't Hollywood like it was in the Old Days), uncovers Graydon Carter's pack of Winston Lights, no doubt hidden deeply in his Black Watch Tartan pants:

"OH, SAY it isn't so! Get Mayor Bloomberg to call immediately and save Graydon Carter from himself. Graydon -- the mighty white-haired king of all he surveys in the magazine world -- is said to be smoking again. Surely this is only temporary, or until the new baby arrives!"

Save him before he smokes again!