"Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance..."

"... defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves. But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet. ... Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed.... Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers? Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a 'lie.' Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names. Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired.... In a post on X on Friday, Mr. Duffy praised Mr. Trump and the work Mr. Musk’s team is doing and said it was an effective cabinet meeting.... Mr. Musk, who later claimed on X that the cabinet meeting was 'very productive,' seemed far less enthused inside the room...."

I'm reading "Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk/Simmering anger at the billionaire’s unchecked power spilled out in a remarkable Cabinet Room meeting. The president quickly moved to rein in Mr. Musk" (NYT).

"Designer Behind President Zelensky’s White House Outfit Defends the Choice."

A headline at Women's Wear Daily.

Who knew Zelensky had a designer?

I ran across that article looking for confirmation of something I happened to see — here — in The Washington Post: "Even after Zelensky refused a White House request to wear a suit, Trump praised his outfit, saying, 'I think he’s dressed beautifully.'"

Zelensky was asked — in advance?! — to wear a suit?! This is the first I'm seeing that.

From Women's Wear Daily: "Zelensky turned up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue wearing a three-button knitted long-sleeve polo shirt from [Elvira] Gasanova’s menswear label Damirli, as well as pants from the collection. She had made a special version for Zelensky with the emblem of a tryzub, a shield with a trident that is the coat of arms that Ukraine adopted in February 1991."

The above-linked WaPo column is "Zelensky must mend the breach with Trump — or resign/Zelensky's stubbornness has badly hurt Ukraine" by Marc A. Thiessen. Excerpt:

"Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said Sunday that he would work with the leaders of Ukraine and France on a cease-fire plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine...."

"Mr. Starmer told the BBC on Sunday that he had spoken to President Trump by phone a day earlier. 'I’m clear in my mind he does want lasting peace, he does want an end to the fighting in Ukraine'.... The prime minister said that he, Mr. Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron of France had agreed they 'would work on a plan for stopping the fighting and then discuss that plan with the U.S.' Any peace agreement 'is going to need a U.S. backstop,' Mr. Starmer added, saying that British and U.S. teams were discussing the idea.... Since Friday, European leaders have lined up behind Ukraine and lauded its embattled president. Mr. Zelensky is also set to meet King Charles III later on Sunday."

The NYT reports.

What will Zelensky wear for his audience with the King? He's met with the King twice before — February 8, 2023 and July 18, 2024 — and both times he wore those dark green "wartime" clothes and not a suit.  Zelensky has met with other European royalty —Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia (Sweden), King Harald V, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit (Norway), King Philippe (Belgium) — and each time, he wore the "wartime" outfit that he was called out for wearing in the Oval Office.

Of course, royalty is a game played through outfits. But Trump has his outfits too. Indeed, questioned about his military getup, Zelensky said that after the war, he could wear a "costume," and by "costume," he meant a suit: "I will wear a costume after this war will finish. Maybe something like yours, maybe something better."

But enough about clothing, what do we think about Europe stepping up to make the peace deal? Who will give Trump credit for making that happen and for, more generally, requiring Europe to take charge of the defense of Europe? Whether the Europeans can close a peace deal is another matter, but they concede in advance that any peace agreement "is going to need a U.S. backstop." Could they, instead, just flow endless money into Ukraine? They've counted on our money for so long. 

The Zs and what they wore.

Yes, there was Zelensky, in his traditional wartime outfit, taunted by Trump and Vance for not wearing a suit, but there was also Zuckerberg, more forcibly eschewing the suit:

NEW: Mark Zuckerberg rips off his suit and starts performing in a blue jumpsuit at his wife's 40th birthday party.

What

The billionaire surprised his wife at her birthday party by wearing singer Benson Boone’s jumpsuit that he used during his 2025 Grammy performance of… pic.twitter.com/ompbHIW8mp

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 1, 2025

ADDED: Did Trump taunt Zelensky about his clothes? I was thinking about what he said when Zelensky first arrived — "Hey, you're all dressed up" — but I see that after Vance went hard on the clothing issue, Trump said: "And I do like your clothing, by the way":

"George, who painted as a hobby, does a self-portrait in evening clothes and his older brother responds with one of himself wearing underclothes..."

"... dyed yellow in the bathtub, paunch visible: 'My Body.'... He was comically underactive, congratulating himself for what [his biographer] calls 'peregrinations,' and work-avoidant: 'Upstairs to get typewriter ribbon,' he’d say, jumping up from the piano. 'It’s the only way I get exercise.' He had a weakness for puns that some found fatal. 'Lust Horizon,' he proposed as an alternate title to Billy Wilder’s 'Kiss Me, Stupid,' his last Hollywood collaboration, and a bomb. After repeated falls he called himself a 'rhapsody in bruise.'..."

From "It’s Hard to Be the Brother of a Genius Who Died Young/In 'Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words,' Michael Owen offers a sympathetic portrait of the lyricist, overshadowed in a life that had him tending the legacy of his younger sibling George" (NYT).

You're not dressing like Cary Grant.

I disagree that you dress like Cary Grant. In this thread, I will list some of the ways in which your dress differs and why such important details matter. 🧵 https://t.co/6hTiPgpxSX

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) April 28, 2024

Read the whole detailed thread. Quite aside from the fantasy of dressing like men did in 1548, Guy shows it's also a fantasy to believe that men in suits these days are dressing like Cary Grant in 1948.

I was especially interested in Guy's attention to the problem of a collar gap, because I was troubled to see that Biden was allowed to go on close-up camera last night at the Correspondents' Dinner with a giant gap between his shirt and his neck:

  

It's reminiscent of a ventriloquist dummy, notably Charlie McCarthy, who dressed in white tie:

"The suit turns a man into a compact, easily readable visual unit over which the eye skims quickly, uninterrupted by embellishments or intricacies of silhouette."

"Suits, therefore, homogenize men’s bodies, making variations of weight, even height, less noticeable, focusing attention on the face. Men’s suits say 'we are heads, not bodies.'... Women are still the adorned, visible, bodily sex whose physicality gets staged by clothes. Accordingly, women’s fashion — including even business attire — requires a near-infinity of daily micro-decisions from head to toe.... Leisure wear for women risks depriving them of gravitas, making them look 'off duty,' and hence outside the space of authority.... [W]omen’s dignity and authority remain, alas, more socially precarious than men’s — harder to construct sartorially and far easier to lose. Taking away the dress code might exacerbate this inequity. What’s more, formal business attire offers some of the most gender-neutral fashion options, thereby enhancing sartorial equity for nonbinary individuals...."

Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "What We Lose When We Loosen Dress Codes/Allowing senators to wear what they please on the Senate floor may seem like liberation, but abandoning the dress code could wind up symbolizing the failure to achieve consensus" (NYT).

I understand that to mean that John Fetterman's dressing in a sweatshirt and shorts is an exercise of male privilege.

"And jeans, while pleasant for some, are like sausage casings for others. A good high-necked dress or a suit and tie may be genuinely more comfortable."

"(Miss Manners has more than one gentleman friend who prefers to wear the latter while aboard an airplane — or even while taking a nap.)"

From a Miss Manners Q&A (in WaPo) answering a question from a woman who doesn't like comments from her friends about how she's "overdressed" when she's really — or so she says — dressing for comfort.

"Brooks Brothers, the clothier best known for men's wear that traces its roots back to 1818, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday..."

"... as the brand buckled under the pressure from the coronavirus pandemic following years of declining sales.... [The pandemic has] pushed major names like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J.Crew into Chapter 11 proceedings.... All of the chains, including Brooks Brothers, plan to keep operating, though likely in a pared-back fashion. Brooks Brothers, with its tony men's wear, has been hit especially hard by the pandemic in an era of remote work and job interviews through Zoom, and the postponement of celebrations like weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations and more. The company... is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the United States.... It has dressed all but four U.S. presidents and its overcoats have been worn for the inaugurations of Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump, among others. It has outfitted Clark Gable, Andy Warhol and Stephen Colbert...."

The NYT reports.

I guess we don't need suits very much anymore. How much have we ever needed dress-up clothes or anything more than durable, well-fitting, weather-appropriate apparel? In the pandemic, so much has changed. I see the phrase "in a pared-back fashion" in the article — referring to the way the clothing retailers will operate in the future. But "pared-back fashion" can be used to describe what we the people are wearing in the time of the virus and, perhaps, long into the post-coronavirus culture of the future. Much has changed, and it will take some time to see which of the changes are temporary and what is the way of the future. Gaze forward: Do you see men in suits?

At least the Presidents will continue to wear suits, don't you think? Even the female Presidents, if we ever get to that phase of the future. Which 4 Presidents do you think did not wear Brooks Brothers clothes? I'm going to say Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, because they all left office before 1818, so they couldn't possibly have worn Brooks Brothers clothes.

President #5 was James Monroe. Was the modern men's suit coming into being yet in his day? Here's something he wore:



Strange how men wore ruffles quite routinely back then. I'm remembering a tweet I saw yesterday:

men what's stopping y'all from dressing like this pic.twitter.com/ZsXaQXqK0M

— roxy (@sherloffee) July 6, 2020

Impressions on the morning after the big debate.

I declined to live-blog last night. Instead, I sat in my comfy chair, alongside my husband Meade, and watched. I wasn't inert — except when I snoozed — but I didn't take notes and I let it run straight through. No pausing for mini-debates of our own. We talked over the candidates when we had comments. The local station butted in a few times to tell us about the approaching thunderstorm and dropped us back into the ongoing debate. Whatever we missed, we missed. Then the thunderstorm delivered its message, louder than any of the candidates (even Julian Castro), so we missed even more.

Yes, I could read the transcript and attend to all the little details, but that would be so boring. Instead, I'll just give you the unique gift I have to give: my impressions of the debate after 8 hours of sleeping and dreaming. I present myself as something like an ordinary person who has watched and been affected by the debate. I'll make a numbered list so I don't get bogged down or bored.

1. I remember Julian Castro going for broke. The stakes were different for him. So he yelled at Biden. It was rude. He taunted him about forgetting something he'd said earlier in a clumsy effort to tap our prejudice against old people. Our memories are failing. I am old and my memory of Julian Castro is the clearest of all my memories of the candidates last night, but my memory of him is that he was rude and ageist.

2. Joe Biden did look old — especially when I switched from the downstairs TV to the newer upstairs TV. The sharper image of him is a little disturbing — I can see that his hair is a strange illusion — but the sharpness of his mind is what matters. He seemed ready to fight, and his idea was he identified with Barack Obama and he offers to make the country into where it would go if we still had Barack Obama. Make America Barack-Obama-Style Again. MABOSA!

3. Bernie was awful. His voice had acquired a new raspiness that made his angry, yelling style outright ugly. I couldn't believe I needed to listen to him. I cried out in outrage and pain. The stabbing hand gestures — ugh! This is the Democrats second-most-popular candidate? I loved Bernie when he challenged Hillary 4 years ago. The anger was a fascinating mix of comedy and righteousness. But the act is old, and the socialism — did Joe call him a "socialist" more than once? — is scary. We can't be having a raving crank throwing radical change in our face.

4. Elizabeth Warren was there on the other side of Biden. She and Bernie were double-teaming Joe, and that worked... for Joe. He linked Warren to Bernie: She's for Bernie/I'm for Barack. I remember Warren reacting to every question with "Listen..." Like we're the slow students in her class and we haven't been paying attention and she's getting tired of us. We should already know what she's been saying on whatever the question happens to be. She was sunny and bright with enthusiasm when she talked about her early career as a school teacher and how when she was a child she lined up her "dollies" for a lesson. She was, she said, "tough but fair." I love whatever love there is for tough but fair teachers. Maybe more of that, but we're not in her class, and our responsibilities are to people and things in our own lives, not in keeping track of whatever her various policies and positions are. Warren seems to have the most potential, but she got yoked to Bernie, and the impression from a distance is: 2 radicals who want to make America unrecognizably different. MAUD!

5. The impression of absence: All the governors are gone. ATGAG.

6. Pete Buttigieg has the best voice. He seems like a solid young man. No impression of any substance.

7. Andrew Yang. I kept wanting him to talk more. His father was a peanut farmer. We made some Jimmy Carter jokes. He wasn't wearing a tie, but he had on a shirt that — buttoned on the second button — seemed to be strangling him more than a tie. That's got to be a metaphor for change. It seems like a good idea, making life freer and more pleasurable, but in practice it's constricting and distracting. Yang said something about picking out 10 families to give $1000 a month. Was that an offer to hand out his own money? I don't know. He ought to try to seem less weird, not more weird. Unless that's his goal: to become the most famous weird guy. Sorry, you can't win that prize. The most famous weird guy is Donald Trump.

8. Cory Booker. For a few weeks, I have had a working theory that he is the best of the bunch. But I don't remember anything he said last night. I talked over his opening statement because I was distracted by the tailoring of his suit. The men all wear suits that are utterly neutral, just providing the idealized shape of a man. That shouldn't be a hard mark to hit.

9. Amy was over there in her blocky greenish pantsuit. I remember nothing she said. I want to like her. She's in reserve as a normal person who might be okay. I remember her getting excited while talking. I guess she was hoping to make an impression.

10. Kamala Harris wore a silk shell under her suit jacket. The glossiness caught the light and shadow in a mesmerizing display of undulation. What did she say? I don't know but she said it in that voice that I can easily imitate simply by holding my nose. She seems unsteady, shaky... like that silk shell is a metaphor. I almost feel sorry for her. I don't understand why she's there and I don't believe she understands. Writing that makes me remember something she said: Her mother told her she needs to be her own person and not let anyone else tell her who she is. That's very inward. Running for the presidency is not a journey of self-exploration. But I don't believe that's what she's really doing. I think she's been told — maybe by a hundred or a thousand people — that she's got what it takes to be President and she's accepted their idea of her. That's the opposite of what her mother said.

11. If there was anyone else on the stage, they've slipped my mind. Let me think hard. I think there were 10, and point #5 is about the absence of governors. Who is that mystery man/woman? I'll have to look it up.

12. LOL. I forgot Beto!

The actor Luke Perry was — according to his daughter — laid to rest in a "mushroom burial suit."

View this post on Instagram

💋In December I went to San Francisco with two of my best friends. One of them, had never never been to California, so we went to show him the Redwoods. I took this picture while we were there, because i thought, “damn, those mushrooms are beautiful.” Now, mushrooms hold an entirely new meaning for me. Any explanation i give will not do justice to the genius that is the mushroom burial suit, but it is essentially an eco friendly burial option via mushrooms. All i can say is that you should all look into them at coeio.com or just by googling “mushroom burial suit” . My dad discovered it, and was more excited by this than I have ever seen him. He was buried in this suit, one of his final wishes. They are truly a beautiful thing for this beautiful planet, and I want to share it with all of you.

A post shared by Sophie Perry (@lemonperry) on May 3, 2019 at 4:53am PDT

"Tonight I was in a hotel bar in Midtown when you came on TV. Very Important Men in expensive suits spoke in hushed tones..."

"... and contorted their faces into various forms of 'worried' as they watched. I freshened my red lipstick and carried on. It was glorious."

Tweets Nicole Sanchez at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who responds, but not to Nicole Sanchez, to one of those VIMs with worried faces:

If you’re a guy in a $ suit that feels some type of way when you see me on TV, maybe you’re limiting yourself to thinking working people’s gain must come at your loss.

After all, mega corps have gained at the cost of working people for so long, many can’t think of any other way.

AOC didn't take the prompt to say, Yeah, I hate those guys, and I aim my red lipstick at them and glory in their anxiety. She looks to the guys — depriving Sanchez of her sisterhood boost — and tells them they are included. Let the businessmen come to me. All are saved!

"Chani Nicholas doesn’t care for the hulking Alex Katz painting, depicting a trio of suited white men, hanging behind the front desk of the Langham hotel in New York. It reminds her of the patriarchy..."

"... she tells me one rainy, starless night in February, as we take the elevator up to her hotel suite and sit on the couch. We’re wrapping up a conversation about privilege, gender equality and the zodiac when Nicholas, who’s become popular on Instagram as a kind of social-justice astrologer, notices a different art piece hovering behind her. This one, she likes. The painting, titled 'Mona,' portrays a woman who shares a striking resemblance to Nicholas – dark hair with tight curls, sharp brown eyes, a strong jawline. She compares it to the painting in the lobby. 'The hotel staff must’ve known not to put me in a room with a bunch of weird guys on the wall,' she says. 'I’m basically an angry feminist who just happens to be into astrology and healing.'"

So begins "Meet the Woman Bringing Social Justice to Astrology/Chani Nicholas is transforming horoscopes from quips about finding true love and stumbling into financial good fortune to pointed calls to action" (Rolling Stone)(via my son John at Facebook).

If you get far enough into that article, you'll see some material about a technology and culture reporter at The New York Times, Jenna Wortham:

“I think the Internet is really good at helping like-minded individuals find each other and affirm each other,” she says. “I know a lot of people in my life who don’t give a shit about astrology and think that my interest in star signs is ludacris [sic] and laughable, but I don’t have to talk to them,” she says....

Wortham thinks that the millennial interest in astrology has to do with the correction of an imbalance, in which people are looking at their relationship to technology and finding it, at least to a degree, unnatural. Because social media and the Internet require people to externalize so much of their lives, people are looking for ways to be more introspective, she says. “In the same way that we’re like, ‘What’s the quality of the food that we’re eating? We’re now like, ‘How are we living? Is there a better way to live?'”

Last year, Wortham went through a difficult breakup and decided to switch neighborhoods in Brooklyn.... “I took Chani’s advice, and I made [something] happen,” says Wortham.... “When I think back on it, I don’t think it would’ve been as easy for me to manage all the influxes of opportunity had my house not been in order.” Nicholas’s guidance, Wortham says, helped her affirm whether she was doing the right thing. “It’s cool feeling like there’s something correlating in the cosmos and on the earth,” she says.

I wonder what the NYT's idea of reporting on "technology and culture" really is. Is it articles on technology designed to draw in people who wouldn't normally read about technology? I went over to the NYT and found this video about astrology:



I had to shut that off because I felt a strong and physical revulsion to the visual style. It didn't remind me of the patriarchy or anything like that. It just made me feel like a very annoying robot had the delusion that he could amuse me and intended to relentlessly act on that delusion. I had my own delusion — that I would have a seizure if I didn't shut it off.

ADDED: Jenna Wortham's new article in the NYT Magazine is "On Instagram, Seeing Between the (Gender) Lines/Social Media Has Turned Out to Be the Perfect Tool For Nonbinary People to Find — and Model — Their Unique Places on the Gender Spectrum." Excerpt:

Personally, Vaid-Menon doesn’t identify as any gender. “Nonbinary is so oxymoronic,” Vaid-Menon told me. “We’re defining ourselves by an absence and not our abundance.” When pressed, they will describe themselves as transfeminine, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary — but only reluctantly. “I really try to escape having to put myself in these categories,” Vaid-Menon said. “I wanted to be free from boxes — not end up in a new one.” Social media is one of the few outlets for that uninhibited expression.

AND here's the Alex Katz painting at the Langham Hotel:



Significantly less evocative of the patriarchy than the Rolling Stone made it sound! The "trio of suited white men" is next to a trio of women. And the men aren't wearing suits. White Man #1 has a turtleneck under his jacket. White Man #2 doesn't seem to have a jacket. And White Man #3 has his shirt collar gaping open in a way that suggests he's not wearing a tie. All 6 adults are staring in the direction of a bright light source and all but the one man in prescription glasses are wearing sunglasses, so they're not in an office environment. Where are they? The background is dark, so it's a confusing setting, but there's no reason to think they're in a position to exercise patriarchal power. They're out for some kind of fun. And the women are in front of the men.

"Secretaries claimed he was both brilliant and 'cute,' although Michelle Obama was skeptical, writing that white people went 'bonkers' any time you 'put a suit' on a 'half-intelligent black man.'"

"She also thought his picture had a 'whiff of geekiness.' But she was more than impressed after meeting him, by his 'rich, even sexy baritone' and by his 'strange, stirring combination' of serenity and power. 'This strange mix-of-everything-man,' when she finally let him kiss her, set off a 'toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.'"

From "Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book" (AP).

I chose to focus on something other than the ripping of Trump. Toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder — now, that's amusing! It's hard to picture Michelle Obama toppled. But how is anyone supposed to write in a dignified, appropriate way about the fact that they're sexually excited by the person they married? "Toppling" is as good a word as any, and you say "lust" but in a mix of other more exalted concepts.

I note she used the word "strange" twice — "strange, stirring combination" and "strange mix-of-everything-man."

Anyway, I'm less interested in Michelle Obama's shots at Trump than what she can say about random ordinary white people — like those secretaries — and what she thinks they think of any "half-intelligent black man" that you (who?) "put a suit on." Can't half-intelligent black men put on their own suit? But I like anything half-honest about how it felt to be an accomplished black woman in a Chicago law firm and trying to succeed despite suspicions and whatever real inequities prevailed at the time and looking to meet a man who could make a good-enough match for her. And then getting Obama! That really is strange!

ADDED: I'll just say one thing about the Trump ripping:

She remembers how her body “buzzed with fury” after seeing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women.

Is the book written in — speaking of "ripping" — bodice-ripper prose? We saw above that Michelle was toppled and blasted by a first kiss, and here we see that she experienced the "Access Hollywood" story as a bodily "buzz." Does she grasp things intellectually or do they happen in her body? And isn't that what Trump was really saying when he made that "grab them by the pussy" remark?

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

The stardom itself reaches into the body and readies the woman to receive him — that's what he was saying.  Trump's impudent verbalization of that process angers Michelle Obama, but the way those words worked was to cause her body to "buzz" — as if Trump's voice were a vibrator.

"And this is my Nelson Mandela couch... with matching suit."

At the Infrastructure Café...

... you can rearrange your mind.

And purchase whatever worldly supplies you may need through the Althouse Portal to Amazon. Did you know that Mitt Romney bought his tuxedo for the Met Gala on Amazon? Here's the brand we're told he bought.

"This was sort of a grudging suit and tie. The tie wasn't really knotted very well. It kind of hung loosely from his neck."

"His shirt looked like it was a bit too big. The suit kind of looked like, OK, here's the most basic suit I can find.... and that's not to say that the suit wasn't expensive. It simply wasn't tailored.... This was a moment when this 33-year-old sort of disruptor really had to come face to face with the fact that he was no longer disrupting. He was in a position in which he had to fix things. And the suit really just underscored very visually that [Zuckerberg] was crossing from being an outsider into now being an insider.... He has, one, used fashion as a way to distinguish himself and to send a message about what it is that he believes he's doing and where his company is situated in the broader cultural context. But I also think it matters because one of the reasons these hearings are in fact televised is because they are political theater. Part of theater is the costuming, and that helps us understand who the players are, what their goals are and what the messaging is."

Ah! But then what does wearing an ill-fitting suit and tie mean?

The remarks are by Robin Givhan (interviewed on NPR about what Mark Zuckerberg wore to Congress).

I agree that it's theater. But:

1. All clothing is theater (the RuPaul adage is "We're all born naked the rest is drag"), and...

2. We need to ask what theater he provided, and I disagree that the bad suit and tie showed that he had crossed over to insiderdom. It would have been perfectly easy for the billionaire Zuckerberg to call in people to dress him in a perfectly fitting suit, a suit that would read to the theater audience as saying that he had arrived in the halls of power ready to assume what he acknowledges are the serious responsibilities that have arisen around him. By wearing a visibly bad suit, he sent the message that he is still the disruptive kid. The authorities got him into this suit, and he chose to look like the kid whose mom dressed him to go a funeral or whatever. He's the guy who did what he had to and adopted the outward trimmings, but only and always with the look of intended to get back into his T-shirt and jeans.

Why it's a terrible idea for Democratic Party members of Congress to wear black to the State of the Union.

"Taking their cue from the Golden Globes, a group of Democratic women in Congress plans to wear black to President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address later this month," NBC reports.

The #1 reason it's a bad idea is that it cedes all the color to the GOP women. Year after year, we've seen the female members of Congress choose bright colors for this occasion, where they are seated in a big crowd along with a lot of men, who always, to a man, wear very dark colored suits. We get images like this:

The women's power is in the freedom not to wear black (or dark gray). If the Democratic women all go with black, they'll blend in with the men, and the Republican women — perhaps all in red — will pop even more than the women usually pop.

It's a TV event, and color works on color TV. Why would you sacrifice your biggest power to stand out at this event where you're stuck sitting in a big group while somebody else talks?

The best answer is: Because any color looks festive, and we want to look as though we're not really there, or we're attending only under duress, and we're really grim and sad and in mourning for this country. How will that work on TV? Trump will be commanding the stage and completely controlling the narrative. All you have is the ability to sit there resisting. You could give some Alito face:



But that was spontaneous and in response to a direct attack. You can't be doing that for an hour or in a preplanned way that's not responsive to what the President is saying, which will probably be optimistic words in an exuberant tone.

Now, I'm actually tired of the really bright colors worn by female politicians. I think I'm on record saying that Hillary Clinton would have done better if she hadn't had an endless array of turquoise and mango and other bright-colored pantsuits but had simply worn a black suit with a white blouse all the time. So in that sense, I support black. But I don't want black — in the context of serious work — to become a symbolic color that means I resist! I want black to be the sublime neutral that it is, that says, I come to work to work, and I'm not fussing over clothing, just here to do the same work men do.

That said, I'd love to see one man show up at the State of the Union in a bright color. Something like this:

I don't believe it can be done. This man would be considered a lunatic. But that only underscores that women have a great privilege here — a color privilege in fashion.

ADDED: Maybe this would work:

Sloppy Steve.

I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018

Trump nicknames, ranked (best to worst):
Lyin' Ted
Rocket Man
Little Rocket Man
Little Marco
Sloppy Steve
Crooked Hillary
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd
Cryin' Chuck Schumer
Low Energy Jeb
Failing New York Times
Psycho Joe
Liddle Bob Corker
Pocahontas

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) January 5, 2018

BREAKING: Bannon gets his Forever Name: Sloppy Steve https://t.co/CnULrpiaxQ

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 5, 2018

ADDED:

Wait! @realDonaldTrump - On Oct 28 you gave ME the nickname “Sloppy Michael Moore” in one of your crazed tweets. Using the same nickname for TWO people...another sign of dementia! Unfit to serve!

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 5, 2018

AND: "Sloppy" is good because Bannon looks extremely sloppy and there's also the idea that it was sloppy to leak so much (ick, bodily fluids) and to be so inattentive to what is true and what it means to be loyal.

The main problem is that Trump already used "sloppy" for Michael Moore.

With 2 data points on "sloppy," I get the impression that he feels disgust toward men who are fat and don't discreetly encapsulate the fat in a standard business suit (as he himself does).

"Fifty years on from the Casual Revolution, the dream of wearing shorts forever has faded."

"Frustrated by the demands of individual expression, some have begun to yearn again for a shared and public happiness. Behind their desire lies a realization that was once universal: A society hospitable to the down and out will not be afraid to dress up."

The last few sentences of "Dress Up/What We Lost in the Casual Revolution," a longish article at First Things, by G. Bruce Boyer. Gee, Bruce, I don't know. A reader sent me this link, thinking I'd be sympatico, because, you know, I've got this longstanding "men in shorts" problem. But my problem with men in shorts is that the proportions of big baggy shorts and a loose untucked shirt cause an adult man to take the form of an inflated boy, and that's not what anyone ought to think of as sexually attractive.

But that might be your message. Feel free to whole-body announce that you are not to be thought of in sexual terms. But I've taken on the mission of stating outright what the message is.

But I've got nothing against casual clothing in general. G. Bruce Boyer (pronounced Boy-YAY?) is railing against jeans and work shirts:

[T]here has been the gradual gentrification of the proletarian wardrobe since mid-century: the work-wear of what used to be known as “blue-collar” workers, clothes that included blue chambray and denim work shirts and trousers (jeans), civilian uniforms of various types (postal workers, garage mechanics, etc.), farm and range clothing, and active field-and-stream outdoor sports clothing....

How is it that we have gone from wearing suits and ties to the office to wearing T-shirts, baseball caps, and a variety of military garments and ranch hand wardrobes?...

I have zero problem with any of these clothes. The only reason a man might look more sexually attractive in a suit is if he is physically out of shape. The man's suit restructures the body into the best approximation of the ideal by building out the shoulders and disguising the belly. The suit is the reverse of the shorts: It imposes the proportions of an adult male. But if you have these proportions, visible in what G. Bruce calls "the proletarian wardrobe," the message is just fine.