The White House clearly won the sartorial contest with the press last week.
Cheney's tie raises eyebrows
Silent message in Fox interview comes from choice of pink neckwear
By JULIE MASON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - It was a moment made for anti-macho pink.
For his relatively emotional mea culpa on Fox News last week, Vice President Dick Cheney confounded fashion expectations and donned a soft-pink necktie.
That's right — Dick Cheney, often depicted by critics as the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.
With U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and weighty debates at home about eavesdropping, high fuel prices and tax cuts, the single sartorial shift earned the vice president and his rosy necktie a lengthy story in the Washington Post. It puzzled over his choice and compared it to pigtails on a rapper.
For all Cheney's much-touted scorn of the news media and the apparatus of public relations, his embrace of pastel showed an awareness of the subliminal signals that fashions send.
The vice president favors dark, classic suits with white shirts and red ties. That's his power-dress uniform.
There have been one or two blunders in the apparel department, however. Cheney infamously donned a bulky parka and a knit ski hat last year for a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp.
Cheney usually does not try to telegraph anything through his wardrobe other than what he seems: authoritative, traditional and a tad ruthless in tough fights.
President Bush is more of a risk-taker. He has been known to wear a shirt in an unusual blue. He also last year acquired a new suit in dark brown — a color generally frowned-upon by fashion-conscious men.
President Reagan wore a brown suit and was widely regarded as possibly the only man in power who could pull it off.
Bush prefers to make his fashion marks through neckwear. When the Israeli prime minister visits, Bush wears a white shirt and blue tie, matching the Israeli flag.
When Bush is cross or wants to make a power statement, the tie is a dark, authoritative red. He unfailingly wears a Kelly green tie on St. Patrick's Day.
It does not appear that Bush even owns a pink necktie. But now at least he knows from whom he can borrow one.
chron.com
Then there's this
Crossing the Line on a Cable Show?
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, February 19, 2006; B06
Dana Milbank can be controversial with readers. The Post reporter has his fans -- and I can be one of them -- but I think his appearance on MSNBC last week was a mistake in judgment.
Milbank wore hunting gear -- an orange stocking cap and striped vest and gloves -- on Keith Olbermann's show Monday night and made several meant-to-be-humorous remarks about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Here's an example from the transcript:
Olbermann: And will there be more hunting trips? I mean, would you actually go hunting with the vice president at this point, even dressed the way you are?
Milbank: I understand that Pat Fitzgerald has been offered an invitation to the next one.
Fitzgerald is the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, in which Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted on charges of perjury.
The mail was swift and sure. I got hundreds of e-mails, many prompted by conservative blogs. A number of readers asked the same question as Mark O'Brien of Mechanicsburg, Pa.: "Is Milbank an opinion columnist or a reporter?"
The answer isn't simple. Milbank, a national political reporter, writes the frequent Washington Sketch column on Page 2 and also does the occasional news story. Editors here do not consider him an opinion columnist.
Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news, said Milbank's column, patterned after similar columns in British newspapers, "observes and reports about the theater of politics. He is a genius at capturing an element of how this city works in a voice that is original and delightful to take in. His column is not ideological. He doesn't take a stand on issues or pass judgment on policy. In that role, he has a little more freedom than a conventional staff writer might."
A second question is easier to answer. From reader Eric Welch: "Does Dana Milbank's wearing of a bright orange hat and vest to cover the vice president's accidental shooting of a friend convey professionalism and objective journalism by Washington Post standards?"
Spayd said she felt Milbank "crossed the line" on his TV appearance. "What he intended as a playful joke was viewed by many as mocking and unprofessional, and understandably so." Suffice it to say that he has been taken to The Post's version of the woodshed and told not to do that again.
washingtonpost.com |
