no Lisa Simpson - or is she?

Wow, as you might say. You guys know I don't really follow American politics until I'm put in a position where I have to - but I've just read a long article in the Washington Post (via the Huffington Post) all about the blog (or "blogette") kept by the Republican candidate John McCain's daughter, Meghan. Now I am practicing stroking my own hair, but it isn't as smooth as Meghan's, so I fear it may not do me any good. And anyway, "blogette"? Yet somehow...

I mean, even her blog has staff! Baroque Mansions only sits five comfortably in one room, so that's a non-starter for this place, you'll be either pleased or dismayed to know.

Anyway, here's a taster:

"Some time back, McCain posted to her Web site a detailed explanation of her campaign trail makeup regimen, including her approach to maximizing lash 'density' by blending two brands of mascara, and her technique for priming lips with concealer before applying Benefit brand lip gloss.

'I just decided to do it 'cause a lot of girls were asking,' she says. 'And then I was dutifully punished on the Internet for writing about makeup.' She starts to giggle. 'But I got a lot of good response and Benefit actually sent me an e-mail being like, "We love that you love Benefit!" Yeah. So, I was like, "Yay"'. "

She's 23. She studied art history at Columbia.

And get this:

"The Web site is not affiliated with or funded by the McCain campaign, according to Meghan and a campaign spokeswoman. McCain says she didn't want to have to cede 'creative control' to her dad's staff.

So how does she pay for it?

'We don't talk about it,' McCain says firmly. ' 'Cause, like, once I answer one question it leads to 50 others.'

But, because she is the candidate's daughter, her press requests are routed through the campaign and, at one point, Brooke Buchanan, the McCain campaign's traveling spokeswoman, comes into the room to keep an eye on the interview.

'Hey, girls,' Buchanan says. She perches on the arm of Bae's chair.

'Did you change your hair?' one of the blogettes asks her."

See? She really is just a normal kinda girl. Srsly. And, blogged up, her family really do start to sound like the Simpsons:

"There's sprightly, 96-year-old Roberta McCain, who not too long ago told C-SPAN that the Republican base was just going to have to hold "their nose" and vote for her son. There's the senator, 71, who famously spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. There's Cindy, 53, John McCain's second wife, who was addicted to prescription painkillers for several years when Meghan was a child, and who in 2004 suffered a stroke. There's Meghan's brother, Jack, in the Naval Academy, and her other brother, Jimmy, a Marine who has served in Iraq. There's her little sister, Bridget, whom the McCains adopted from Bangladesh as an infant, and who was, in Dad's 2000 presidential race, the object of a smear campaign insinuating that she was the product of an illicit union."

And then there's little Lisa, the little PR genius.

The Post again:

"McCain is a political outsider with an insider's access, and on her Web site she notices the things political junkies never would, like the 'really cute' shoes Chelsea Clinton wore when they met. She posts photographs of her own shoes and of the shoes she encounters on the trail, including those belonging to such fashion luminaries as Dick Armey and Henry Kissinger.

'Because I love shoes, and who doesn't want to know what kind of shoes Dr. Kissinger wears?' she writes on her blog.

We didn't know we wanted to know, but now that she mentions it, we kinda do."

Hmm. You couldn't make it up.* She may never even need to fall back on that education, ya think? (Make sure you click on the pic.)

* But if you did, don't forget that foundation!