Senator Amy Klobuchar was hungry, forkless and losing patience. An aide, joining her on a trip to South Carolina in 2008, had procured a salad for his boss while hauling their bags through an airport terminal. But once onboard, he delivered the grim news: He had fumbled the plastic eating utensils before reaching the gate, and the crew did not have any forks on such a short flight. What happened next was typical: Ms. Klobuchar berated her aide instantly for the slip-up. What happened after that was not: She pulled a comb from her bag and began eating the salad with it, according to four people familiar with the episode. Then she handed the comb to her staff member with a directive: Clean it.

Gross. Just gross. Anybody not with me here?

Deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz took flak for merely licking his comb to get his hair straightened out before a congressional hearing. Klobuchar used hers as an eating utensil and then forced an aide to clean it off for her after she had dined out with it.

This certainly makes her memorable to voters. She's now the one who ate her meal with her comb and made someone else serve as the dishwasher after the meal. She didn't even just slip it into her purse, wiped off with a napkin, and hope no one would notice — which kind of shows a deficit of judgment.

After all, she could have just waited to eat the meal, given that it was a short flight. It might have still been hot, and in any case, the microwave would be waiting.

Or she could have shown her cultural sensitivity by eating it with her hands, a crowd-pleaser, given that she represents a state with a large Somali population. Somalis, along with Ethiopians, Cambodians, Indians ,and many other nationalities, about a sixth of the world's population, have techniques for eating gracefully with one's hands. If you can show you know the technique, thumb over fingers, as I learned to do in Singapore from the Tamil Singaporeans, why not? Here's a YouTube starter kit showing the technique. Maybe she can get some advice from Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Or she could have done what smart ladies do and carry a tough little unbreakable plastic fork in her purse before the incident occurred. Starbucks has some useful rubbery black ones for this purpose.

Or she could have asked the other airline passengers if they had forks she could use. One of them would have. She could have even asked the beleaguered aide to ask.

What she has now is the designation to voters as the gross Democrat who ate food with her comb — and who was mean about it to boot. "You probably wouldn't want to work as a direct report for Klobuchar," writes Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Gross. And the mockery (from The Atlantic, no less) about which combs work best, as well as the memes (thanks to Power Line's Steven Hayward — and be sure to see his whole picture show), is flowing. Here's one:

Way to go, bozo. Klobuchar is not going to live this down. She's going to take this anecdote to her grave, a marker, a way to stand out, always there in the minds of voters. Her justification of the matter, as her "tough standards," is preposterous, given that there's nothing tough or exacting about eating with a comb. There's just grossness.

All because she couldn't adapt to an unforeseen situation and had to make a big stink about it. She's not ready for prime time. One down, a dozen clowns to go.