S.C. Beauty Salons Are Political Soapboxes

Washington Post: Campaigns Look To Beautify Their Candidates Amid Hair Clippings

(WASHINGTONPOST.COM)  "Go 'head, woman," someone in the audience said. "You've got more power than any woman in this whole world." Bringing news and a DVD of Clinton's presentation back to Charleston was Katie B. Catalon, a retired beautician who is also Bell's sister-in-law. Catalon, in her fourth term as president of the National Beauty Culturists' League -- an 8,000-member organization of black hairstylists founded 88 years ago -- is a seasoned beauty shop campaigner in her own right and an eager Clinton volunteer.

Catalon met Clinton at a reception in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was campaigning in Charleston. "It was strange, because we were there at the reception, and I walked toward her, and she was walking towards me. And we held hands. She said thank you so much for being here, and I said, 'I should be thanking you,' " Catalon recalled.

When the senator from New York announced her run for president, Catalon called the campaign and offered to help connect Clinton with black beauty salon owners. Bell was one of the first enlistees. From her stylist's station, surrounded by black glue for hair weaves, activator for Jheri-like curls, plastic rollers and hot irons to serve her steady clientele, Bell talks up her candidate.

"We touch a lot of people during the run of the day," said Bell, 63. "We are influential."

Last week, the Clinton campaign mailed hundreds of countertop pop-ups to Bell and other beauty shop owners; they display photos of her changing hairdos under this Clinton quip: "Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will."

Most of Bell's customers have said they are looking hard at Clinton and Obama. Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina is a distant third, polling in the low single digits among black women here. Bell initially found the candidates so similar on the issues that they were hard to distinguish, so she made her decision based on her sense of their electability.

"I'm not even thinking about color, but I guess in a way I am. I think basically white people won't vote for him," Bell said of Obama. "Isn't that what voting is all about? You are voting for a person that you feel could be a winner."

That pessimism that a black man could ever become president is a powerful force, even for Obama supporters such as Gaynell Wise, 51, an accountant who was getting her hair cut the day Champaign came into Passion Slice.

"I'm voting for him. I'm old-school. I know what's going on," she told Champaign. "He's trying to take this country someplace it's never been before. It's going to take a lot for him to win. I know that. I know the system is not set up for him to win. It's going to take a miracle and a lot of prayers for him to win. If you can get us to vote . . ." Most of the salons Champaign visits are frequented by younger women, who polls show have been more likely than their elders to vote for black presidential candidates.

"I came to the campaign because I was tired and angry," she told the customers at Passion Slice. "I was angry because of what was happening with my family and issues with women being abused. I read 'Dreams From My Father' -- and I suggest that you all read it -- and I was blown away," she said as a hairstylist glanced up from her shears. "This man did everything people were telling me I couldn't do. . . . If we don't get your support now, he won't be around to run in November. We need your help. Who in here is supporting Barack Obama?"

Hammond, the salon owner, stopped combing out her own hair, which had been wrapped atop her head, to clap. Three of the four women in the beauty shop raised their hands in support of Obama, and Champaign, whose lilting accent reflects her roots in Charleston's Gullah creole culture, handed them pledge cards.

"I don't follow all the politics the way that I should, but I will be voting for Barack Obama because he will make a good president," Hammond said. "My first time voting was in the last election, and I rounded up everyone in the shop to go vote against President Bush. . . . Now that I know I need to vote in the primary, I'll vote then, too."

The 22-year-old woman shaping Wise's hair into a short, Halle Berry-like 'do admitted that she wasn't registered. Client took beautician to task.

"Young people don't vote," said Wise, who said she had donated a small amount to Obama's campaign online. "Y'all act like y'all don't even live in this country. If they start sending you over there to that war, I bet you'd vote then."

Champaign handed the young hairstylist a registration card.

"It's long days going out there, talking to people where they are," said Champaign, who gave up a scholarship to Georgetown Law School to stay in Charleston and work for Obama. "That's how much I believe," she said.

She handed Hammond a fresh poster of Obama wearing a black smock as an African American barber in Marion, S.C., trimmed his fade. Then she scooted back out into the rain and to two more stops: Diamond Cutz II and Lucciono.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

[terrorislam1]

OUTED

THE LIBERAL MAIN MEDIA AND DEMONIC-RAT BS PROPOGANDA MACHINE

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war.
http://www.militaryreporters.org/sanchez_101207.html

Sanchez Blasts Media, But Media Only Highlight His Criticism of Bush
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/10/15/sanchez-blasts-media-media-only-highlight-his-criticism-bush

Sanchez Assaults Drive-By Media
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_101507/content/01125112.guest.html

Retired general issues sharply worded rebuke of ''unscrupulous reporting''
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/10/retired-general.html

Sanchez: Media''s Reporting of Iraq War Endangered Soldiers'' Lives
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301676,00.html

[tnt1954]

i honestly feel to emphasize the marilyn monroe
look and her doctrine, to keep foreign influence
out of our hemisphere, that hilary needs to go
platinum with her hair. its too dark blonde.
rita cosby an ambitious blonde went to the
university of south carolina, and she is on a major
case and story and plans to marry fidel castro
soon, and get the inside scoop and then become
queen of cuba in an odd twist to the anna nicole
smith case. and scandinavians will then fill
up cuba. wouldn''t fidel look handsome next to
rita in his regalia, and in the rolls royce
with rice being thrown? shampoo starring warren
beatty, gave brandy, of the song by looking glass,
a great idea. she became a hairdresser and
opened the african experience in canoga park, ca.
after i ''helped'' her in sherman oaks, ca from
my skateboard shop, the sidewalk surfer. let
the kids go skateboarding at a skateboard park,
you can pick them up after the salon. brandy''s
husband sadly to say, died off the cape of good
hope, a pirate, his ship, destroyed by the us navy.
she still carries the torch for him. awwww.