A NEW-FANGLED ETCH-A-SKETCH ... AT STAPLES!

Politics reared its ugly head -- with a little help from yours truly -- at the local Staples on Wilshire today. There I was, trying to find the perfect notebook, when a salesman called my attention to a new gadget on display, the Boogie Board, an LCD "writing tablet" that lets you doodle to your heart's content, then erase your work at the push of a button. "It's the memo pad of the future," the salesman gushed. "I see what you mean," I said. I waited until he disappeared, then left a little message on the demo model: "Hmmm ... this is better than Mitt Romney's Etch-a-Sketch!" Perhaps that's why Staples -- a chain Romney helped to establish when he was at Bain Capital -- is so hot on the product ...