Axelrod’s million-dollar mustache meets its maker on live TV

President Obama’s longtime campaign advisor David Axelrod put his money where his mouth is -- or slightly above it to be more accurate -- having his trademark mustache shaved off on live TV this morning, making good on a pledge to raise $1 million for epilepsy research.

Axelrod, who’d already offered up his lip spinach as a wager once before -- vowing to shave it off if Obama didn’t carry the electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Minnesota or Michigan -- had promised to shave it off in exchange for $1 million in donations to CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy), an organization in which he and his wife Susan are involved. (Their daughter has epilepsy.)

After large-dollar donations poured in from the likes of Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Donald Trump, Axelrod took his ‘stache to get slashed on the set of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Before the clippering began, Axelrod admitted that the prospect of bidding farewell to his face furniture had kept him awake most of the night.

“I’ve been looking at it in the mirror for 40 years,” he said.

It’s too bad the parody @AxelrodMustache Twitter account, which purported to give voice to the campaign advisor’s upper lip, went dormant after only a month (as of this writing, the last update was Nov. 1 -- the day before the election). It would have been fun to follow the whole affair from a stache’s-eye view.

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