FIRST OFF . . .

From the “Would you buy a used car from this man?” file: This week’s issue of Newsweek magazine contains a three-page color pictorial of Madison Avenue’s favorite fibster, Joe Isuzu, dressed in a white 10-gallon hat and gray business suit and--typically--lying about Isuzu’s new line of pickup trucks. That’s all well and good, but whose idea was it to run--on a page opposite one of the ads--a picture of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, dressed in an almost identical white 10-gallon hat and gray business suit as part of a story on his campaign in Texas? The story’s sub-headline reads, “The Democrats put on a campaign masquerade.” Asked about the apparent flub, a Newsweek spokesman said: “Expletive deleted, we just missed it.”