I Am Very Tall

I found this link to a Dallas Morning News article via David Winer's Scripting News.

Apparently, Barack Obama smokes cigarettes. Will this news tarnish his golden boy image with the taint of weakness, or burnish it with the luster of "he's one of us" normality? Will parents think of him as a bad influence on their children, or just shake their heads in amusement, much like they did with Bush's blatant stupidity?

It's hard to tell. Americans are fickle people. They seem to think that a person's consumptive habits somehow define their moral character more accurately than their actual history of decision-making. I would be pretty disappointed if this ever became an issue, though. There are so many more important criteria to think about (e.g. positions on the environment, Iraq, taxes, religion) that if this one actually gains traction, then my faith in democracy as a political system will drop by about five points.

**** Update ****
As I don't want to be yet another vector for anti-Obama sentiment, I removed the picture.