There’s No Room for a Rug in a Prison Cell

From just inches away, the one question asked more than any other about James A. Traficant Jr. seemed knowable:

The hair--is it real?

A vantage point a couple of steps above him at the Cleveland courthouse made a close inspection not only possible but unavoidable. Shellacked individual strands of gray and silver that not even gale winds could budge. A hairline starting so far back that his comb job went up and over like an awning, a feat of coiffure engineering.

Conclusion--one widely agreed upon in Washington: The hair was just too awful to be anything other than real.

Wrong.

As if becoming only the second congressman expelled since the Civil War era and being hauled away in handcuffs this week to serve an eight-year prison term on federal corruption charges were not ignominy enough came this news flash: It’s a rug!

A sheriff in Akron, Ohio, where Traficant was booked after his sentencing Tuesday, said the toupee’s existence came to light during a routine search. Traficant, a former county sheriff himself, was allowed to keep the hairpiece on for his booking photo at Summit County Jail and while he awaits assignment to federal prison.

But like Michael Milken--the junk-bond king turned convicted felon whose shockingly hairless head was unveiled when he checked into Federal Prison Work Camp in Pleasanton in 1991--Traficant, 61, will soon go au naturel. Federal Bureau of Prisons grooming regulation 551.3 states in no uncertain terms: “Inmates may not wear wigs or artificial hairpieces, unless medical authorization to do so is approved by the Warden.”

So the plume-like hair, even more his trademark than his 30-year-old bell bottoms, denim suits and “beam me up” speeches on the House floor, is almost certainly history.

Which may simplify life behind bars for Traficant, who has bragged in the past that he achieved his signature look by styling his hair with a weed whacker--an item hard to come by where he is going. Just one mystery remains unsolved. How could a man who has been married to a hairdresser for 34 years end up looking like that in the first place?