By Debbie Schlussel

Today’s Wall Street Journal front page brings us the most important news story of the day:  that Tom DeLay didn’t use spray tan for his abs while on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” Now that we know this the world can go on. (And we also see what’s happened to the WSJ under Rupert Murdoch’s ownership–more stories like this.)

Tom DeLay Wants You To Know: No Six Pack Abs Spray Tan

I liked Tom DeLay, who was extremely villainized as GOP leader in the House merely because he was an outspoken conservative.  The same goes for his trumped up, going-nowhere indictment (though his and his wife’s entanglements with sleazebag Jack Abramoff was troubling).  But his appearance on “DWtS” was a mistake.  Stupid.  Unfortunately, his ego got in the way of reason, and he couldn’t say no.  The results:  even though his appearance on the show is long over and gone, his picture is front and center on the cover of the Journal along with a sub-headline that’s brainless.  And here’s the, um, “meat” of the article:

In the world of television, Fiona Locke is a special-effects expert. She doesn’t blow up buildings or choreograph car crashes. Ms. Locke wields an airbrush gun filled with a brown liquid. She makes people tan and fit-looking. . . .  “Dancing With the Stars” producers advise contestants to get sprayed down the Sunday before each televised competition.

Mr. DeLay received bronzer on his face before stress fractures in both his feet caused him to quit “Dancing With the Stars” after just three weeks. He said he has an unwritten deal with ABC that costumes not show his “beautiful body.”

“They said if I wanted to open my shirt for the finale, they could paint a six pack on me,” Mr. DeLay said, from his cellphone as he drove an RV from Sugar Land, Texas, to Los Angeles for the finale, at which eliminated contestants will appear one last time.

If he was trying to be funny, he failed.  This is a (former) politician with years of experience dealing with the press, and it strangely didn’t occur to him to say, “Uh, I’m not gonna comment on that.”

One other note: the article is written by Amy Chozick, a fabricating “reporter” for the Journal, who covered the 2008 Presidential race. As I’ve noted previously on this site, she made up “facts,” and lied in her articles, especially when she wrote about Ali Jawad, the Hezbollah supporter and federal insurance fraud convict, I got the McCain campaign to dump from his Michigan organization. Chozick, a lazy “journalist” who doesn’t do her homework, “reported” in the Journal that Jawad was a “respected businessman,” who was removed form the McCain campaign simply because he is Muslim. Not even close to the truth. And she declined to mention his federal conviction or his open support for Hezbollah.

I wonder what she didn’t report about her conversation with Tom DeLay. Either way, that’s a conversation in which he should have declined to participate.