12 March—Sad business first: Due to fiscal exigency—two new mouths to feed, vet bills, ungodly grocery inflation (including on remaindered food), and such—the Monitor has been forced to double its subscription rate. Sorry, but the new rate will take effect with tomorrow’s issue. We can’t afford a firewall (and we wouldn’t know how to use one if we could), so subscribers and adventitious readers are expected to do the right and honorable thing.

With that out of the way, then, let’s go to Donald Trump’s blatantly, recklessly, dastardly, dangerously incompetent ass-licking warlord Pete Hegseth. Before that, though, everybody knows that Trump himself, in addition to being a vainglorious grifter, is a vain bastard in every conceivable way and many inconceivable ways. There’s no need to mention the distinctive Mandarin or Valencia orange color of his physically thick but figuratively thin skin, probably from a combination of improperly applied self-tanning crap and heavy makeup, which must find its way to his shirt collar. But it gives us too much pleasure not to mention it.

Well, glamour boy Hegseth is no better. Getting past his obtrusive Old Glory pocket hankie, like his lord and master, he’s said to play with himself by, among other things, applying his own makeup, including but not necessarily limited to concealer, bronzer, and foundation. At least his complexion isn’t orange.

Then there’s Hegseth’s distinctive coif, variously described accurately as a “greasy mess” or “wet look” and inaccurately as a mullet or man bun. Does he use salt-and-pepper hair prep to convey an air of maturity and gravitas, both of which he clearly lacks? If gravitas is his intent, moreover, he kills it with the gel, pomade, and/or high-shine wax he excessively plops on, in, and under his resplendent hair. And does he spray or brush the ceramic glaze over his effulgent coif before he sticks his head in a hot kiln to vitrify the magnificent do, lest one hair ever make its way out of formation?

So it’s reported in yesterday’s Washington Post that the vain warlord Hegseth blocked press photographers from two briefings—on 4 March and 10 March—because of “unflattering” photographs taken during one of his rare actually-on-the-record briefings and published in various media outlets throughout the cruel world. Only official Defense Department photogs are now permitted in the briefings.

Yes, naturally the Defense Department denies it. And yes, it’s still officially the Defense Department in spite of Trump’s gratuitous executive order secondarily rebranding it to suit the President of Peace’s bellicose disposition. Congress made the War Department the Defense Department in 1949 and only Congress can make the Defense Department the War Department now or in the future.

In all events, Hegseth can’t blame photographers for his warped image: