ALL IS VANITY, EVEN THE GOOD-OL'-BOY KIND

Please remember, the next time a Democrat gets chided for spending a little money on a haircut, that some vanity about appearance is politically unacceptable and some just means you're a regular Amurrican:

Rick Perry earns a $150,000 annual salary and has a blind trust. But he’s also received over 90 personal gifts -- many of them from top donors and political appointees -- during his 11 years as Texas governor, according to personal financial statements he filed with the state....

Perry's most prolific boot-giver by far is famed Houston bootmaker Rocky Carroll, who has given Perry at least 10 pairs of custom-made boots since 1991, according to the filings, including a 2008 pair bearing the insignia of the Republican Governors Association, which Perry chaired until stepping down to run for president.

Carroll -- who has made boots for everyone from Queen Elizabeth and Liz Taylor to former Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush (both 41 and 43) -- told POLITICO his boots start at $500 a pair....

Somehow I doubt that the custom-made boots Carroll made for Perry fall at the low end of the spectrum -- the ones he made for the elder President Bush were valued at $995 way back in 1990; earlier this year, the Palm Beach Post estimated that the ones Carroll makes for Florida governor Rick Scott "range in price from $500 to $2,500." This blogger offers an estimate of $1500 and $2500 a pair for Perry's gift boots.

I know, I know: manly men wear four-figure cowboy boots, while silly girls and silky-pony Democrat wussy men get three-figure haircuts. They're totally different kinds of vanity ... for some reason.