From the “Screw your thirst, Image is Everything” file…

In the February issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Cullen Murphy’s column “Lifosuction” illuminates the contemporary cultural cachet of higher education in the U.S.:

Thomas M. Menino, the mayor of Boston, is not a flashy fellow. He gets tongue-tied easily, as many of us do, and he lacks the aura of a Willie Brown or a Rudolph Giuliani. But he is a tribune of the city’s neighborhoods and working people, and he was elected to a third term last fall with more than 70 percent of the vote.

One of the few clouds to darken his campaign, and it was a small one, came a couple of weeks before the election, when The Boston Globe alleged that Menino had committed a familiar political transgression — tweaking his r