Not just 'another pasty white guy'

I eagerly clicked my way over to NBC Nightly News this evening to see if what I'd read this past month had really been true, to see if Chuck Todd actually got to keep the goatee.

(Todd told Gail Shister at TVNewser that, without the whiskers, he'd be just "another pasty white guy.")

Lo and behold, the whiskers remained, as promised.

As a devotee of my own goatee, I take peculiar pleasure in seeing someone of Todd's stature flout the facial hair line.

Can a man wear a beard in 2009 and not be summarily dismissed as a miscreant, or forlorn beatnik?

Yes he can.

— TJ Sullivan

* My Friend John Ettorre at Working With Words passed along a link to a TIME Magazine piece published in 2001, back when Al Gore whiskers were all the rage.