From Robin Givhan:
At yesterday’s gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen’s hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children’s clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.
Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one’s country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words “Staff 2001.” It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.
It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots—thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow—where he had made remarks earlier in the day—to Auschwitz?
Good question!
Here’s another: Does anyone really think that had, say, Al Gore’s advance team forgotten to pack his ceremonial mourning overcoat, the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan would have penned a smarmy story comparing Big Wooden Al to a dorky kid dressed for kickball camp by overprotective parents?
Of course not. In fact, my guess is that Gore could have shown up at Auschwitz wearing a suit made from Jackie Mason and trimmed with the ass hair of Woody Allen, and Givhan would have bent over backwards to frame the Democratic VP’s fashion choice as “a daring deconstruction of the kind of traditional ceremonial mourning practices that have turned commemorations of singular events like the Holocaust into mundane—and cynically commodified—photo ops for heads of state and /or their proxies.” Or some such.
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(h/t Dave at Garfield Ridge)
Wow! You can get a suit made out of Jackie Mason! I loved him as the Aardvark!
Cheney’s probably doing more to prevent it from happening again than all the rest of the attendees combined.
By the way, isn’t Robin Givhan the chick who wrote that catty piece about Katherine Harris’s attire four-plus years ago?
I heard that he was orginally planning to wear the traditional sack-cloth and ashes long considered de-riguer for Hebraic comemorations, but the German contingent was concerned that it was “Too Jewish.” You just can’t please anybody some days; or if say your name is “Dick Cheney.”
Robin Givhan can say what she will about Dick Cheney’s attire, but at least Cheney has better sense than to marry Mike Tyson.
I find the article perfectly reasonable and balanced. For crying out loud, EVERYbody knows that long black coat + puffy black hat = sad while olive drab coat + white trim = Jew hating manchild. Duh.
And heaven help the gentleman behind Cheney wearing a brown (brown!) hat. Or the fellow in the top left corner exposing his white shirt – we all know what THAT means.
I can’t wait for Givhan to skewer them too!
You gotta, admit, though, he does look pretty goony.
In a related story, pole-dancer Patty Merkin was fired yesterday from her job at the Pink Pussy in San Jose, CA. Her manager Ed Deline was quoted as saying that shaving her pubic hair into a Star of David was “inappropriate, given the circumstances.”
Ms. Merkin could not be reached for comment.
Yeah, he does look goofy. Not a whole article’s-worth, but it does rate a snide comment.
President Reagan looked like a million bucks when he had his pics taken in cold places.
I presume that MS Givhan suffers from PMS big time!!
Now, now, let’s not make this a gender thing. She could just be a big yutz.
”before they are sent away to camp. – As long as we’re pointing out insensitivity. The ceremony’s at fucking Auschwitz people. What are her editors thinking?
Be careful dick!
[keyword “because” heh]
Cheney’s from Wyoming, for crying out loud. Yes, he should have better outdoor attire, but he’s not necessarily the kind of guy who would think in terms of dropping thousands of bucks for one outdoor appearance. He’s the VP, and he likes to stay behind the scenes. Allowances should be made.
I don’t remember hearing a word about how Michael Moore dressed for the Oscars last year.
Or, for that matter, how Steven Spielberg dresses nearly everywhere he goes. (Not to compare Spielberg with Moore; just injecting a little California into the discussion here: it really shouldn’t matter that much, and it sounds like Robin’s got a little East Coast snobbery going on.)
It’s okay with Eva, so screw Givhan.
Eva Mozes Kor, a 70-year-old Terre Haute woman , and one time Mengele lab rat, wore a bright blue coat and bright red scarf Thursday because, she said, “Auschwitz is such a dreary place, not so bad now as then, but it needs some color.”
That coat is a USAF inclement weather jacket. And dick has an implanted GPS device, so he can call airstrikes on a whim. Don’t FUSS with him.
“they were also wearing gentlemen’s hats.”
Huh? Gentlemen’s hats?
These are the same folks who champion JFK’s foresaking of a hat at his inauguration as the turning point in the downfall of the hat as a de rigueur men’s fashion accessory.
And something tells me that they’ve equally spread a lot of ink regarding casual dress as a legitimate replacement for business attire.
And then there was the shitting bricks in their knickers (snide allusions to the Reagan’s expectations of American Royalty) when the Reagan’s revived a sense of formality to the White House, after 4 years of Jimmy Carter padding around in his slippers and cardigan, with the thermostat turned down to 60 degrees, or some such nonsense.
I could go on, but you get the sense that when legacy media, such as the WaPo, is reporting on fashion at a Holocaust memorial service, they haven’t exactly got their finger on the pulse of the event.
And was anyone actually wearing a Stetson–an American cowboy hat, at that. Seems that would’ve been the first item of contempt by such fashion police–although it would exactly qualify as she suggests as the “kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one’s country.”
It must be difficult to live up to the earnestness and self-importance portrayed by Givhan’s critique.
So what you are telling me is that the Washington Post ran out of grownups for reporters again?
So which is it? Is Cheney in the pocket of those dirty Jew neocons– or does he think so little of them that he’d wear a bikini to Wolfowitz’s bar mitzvah…?
His bar mitzvah is coming up, isn’t it?
I thought it was a well known fact that L.L. Bean is a thrice-removed subsidiary of Haliburton.
Did I miss something here?
I heard about this on the radio yesterday, and the commentator mentioned that anyone who has undergone the type of heart surgery that Cheney has is in particular danger from seriously cold weather. It is apparently very important for the VP to take extra precautions to stay warm in cold weather, hence the nanook-of-the-north outfit.
Robin Givhan is catty to everyone; she was merciless on the Gore 2000 earth tones. You don’t need a fashion reporter to see that the Funeral-Attender-in-Chief from the nation that will force democracy on everyone is dressed for some ice-fishing.
Elmer Fudd earflaps? Would have made it art.
No doubt Givhan will be fashion-reporting from Gitmo sometime soon. Because if we dress in cashmere (besides Inauguaration Day), the terrorists win.
In the run-up to this, Schroeder was trying to remove any mention of Germany’s role in this, attempting to emphasise Auschwitz’s location in Poland.
Eventually, he had to settle for admitting that the camp had been run by the “Nazis” (country of origin unmentioned).
The Vice President’s sartorial shortcomings – if any – pale by comparison with German hypocrisy. Which pales in turn by comparison with German savagery.
For a sensible Midwest take on the Cheney parka affair see http://daytonohio.blogspot.com/2005/01/judging-man-by-coat-he-wears.html
I think this is a genuine faux pas, but I can think of much better things to get my knickers in a twist over.