Getting monkeys in your hair

Anne Lamott, liberal author and activist, had an article in the L.A. Times yesterday that told about her getting a monkey caught in her hair. Really. (Tip: Ann Althouse)

I'm doing fairly well for a grandmother who had a monkey tangled up in her hair last month on a ghat in Varanasi at sunset. Back home again now, I can report that in the midst of the zap that is India, with its heartbreaking, gorgeous, hallucinatory, dazzling, kaleidoscopic, mind-blowing grandeur and loud reality -- a place where having a monkey's hand trapped in your dreadlocks is pretty par for the course -- I came to three decisions about my own country.

Told you. She had a monkey caught in her hair.

Oh, her three decisions?

1. Keep her "humor and good nature"
2. Forgive John Edwards
3. Trust Obama

Okay, the first two could just as easily be accomplished by converting to Christianity. You don't need a monkey for that. I've checked.

The third? Trusting Obama? Apparently you need a monkey for that.

I can't say that, though, because I'm a conservative. It would be racist to use "monkey" and "Obama" in the same essay, much less the same sentence. However, if I was some dreadlock-wearing 50-something from San Francisco, I could get away with it.

But I'd have to worry about getting monkeys in my hair.