I developed an affection for hats when I was a kid. I had a lucky “Captain” baseball cap in junior high—lucky, obviously, because I wore it three years in a row at our regional Olympics of the Mind competitions and my team won, and then was required by three different coaches not to wear it at the state competition and saw my team lose its chance at Nationals each time. I’ve cycled a varied cast of fedora, panama, outback, boonie, ushanka, corps, and trusty old beanie. Still hearing someone’s exaggerated guidance from my youth that “You lose 98% of your body heat through your head” (not complete nonsense, as I can attest from the ten-degree difference I feel just from shaving off an inch of hair to go bald in the summer) I wear a hat every time I go outside when it’s below 60°F. Even in our warmer months, I automatically reach for the hat hooks when I head out the door and have to engage in significant internal debate to let myself outside hatless.
I more automatically, with far less internal debate, remove my hat when I go indoors. My house, your house, school, grocery store, post office, convention hall—I still respond to the rule deeply ingrained in my youth by nearly every adult I encountered that gentlemen take their hats off indoors. (I still puzzle over why cowboys, who carry some Gone with the Wind-style connection to past chivalry, flaunt this old gentlemanliness most flagrantly with their ostentatious headgear.)
Hats in professional settings are impolite, unprofessional, unnecessary, distracting… and generally not even fashionable. Look at Donald Trump’s cap in his March 14 White House press conference:
The simple fact that no one else in the photo is wearing a cap shows the absurdity of Trump’s cappery. No professional wears a cap to a meeting, certainly not a nationally televised formal event, other than professional baseball players (and most of them are outside, or ought to be, because indoor parks are a sin of their own).
A cap like Donald’s is designed for one practical purpose: shading one’s eyes from the sun. It can provide the ancillary benefits of keeping one’s hair out of the wind, one’s ponytail in place, and one’s body heat from escaping on a cool day (not as good as a fleece beanie, but, hey! 98%!) No such purpose exists indoors.
Professionals and public communicators aren’t supposed to wear any clothing with words or logos because they distract; a cap with a message distracts all the more, since it’s as close to the line of eye contact as possible. The only thing an executive could wear that would be more distracting and more intrusive on seeing and reading the executive’s expression would be sunglasses, which in a setting like this had better have a medical reason.
The baseball/trucker cap is also the least fashionable item of clothing one can wear in a workplace. It does not go with a suit. It does not go with anything one should be wearing to a professional workplace, especially not the highest office in the land.
But the whole Trump movement seems to be about affirming impoliteness, crassness, and unprofessional behavior. How better, then, for an aspiring Trumpist governor to pander to her godhead than to ape his cappery at her own press briefings?
Like Michael Scott mussing his hair like Jim Halpert’s, Governor Kristi Noom looks like she’s copying Donald Trump’s style as one more ploy to make him notice her, love her, and appoint her to something, anything, to get her out of dreary old Pierre and back to the glamour and excitement of Washington, D.C. She wears a logo that distracts viewers. And, worse than Trump does, the Governor chooses a cap that hides her eyes from the public in whom she seeks to inspire trust.
I love hats. They have their time, place, and function. That time and place is not a state or national leader’s podium, where the hat serves no function but distraction… and perhaps in Noem’s case, affirmation of the bad behavior of the man she hopes will Calgon-take-her-away to bigger and better things.
NOem is Chris Christie, a perfect example. Christie thought he was gonna be a big timer in republican politics, president even. Then along came Jared Kushner, the same Jared that NOem gives eye kisses too, and then Christie got steamrolled and tossed to the side of the heap. It will be fun to see this little fraud with all of her fakery, get that bus rolled over her, with Jared laughing all the way while running over the hat as well.
In western South Dakota, the ranchers especially, like to see professionalism. You better dress properly when you come to the ranch to do business. NOem actually knows how to dress, as you can see in her past campaigns for statewide office attire. Cory is correct, she is angling to run with the big crooks, but alas, she is just another groupie…with a tin hat.
She IS heeding my constant critique of her messeging brain DEAD 2ND amend idiots like AR15 touting Nazi white supremacists and anti-govt/tax cheats and Bundyland freaks holed up in Idaho. Zip Feed caps are fine at least.
Oh, have you seen The Nation’s chief Jared/Ivanka “zombie watcher” Amy Wilentz’s column 3.18.20. Hillaryous!!
leslie, I googled but couldn’t find the column. Any links?
OK, this is semi-interesting, because we all have our opinions about fashion, and you know what they say about opinions. So, let’s compare our opinions.
I’ve always been one who doesn’t give a damn about what someone wears. I don’t judge people, and that, I think, includes Noem, by their fashion choices, or whether they doff or don’t doff their hats, caps or other headwear inside. Sometimes I say catty things about people’s attire. This disappoints me about myself, because I don’t really care about such matters. So, why I say something about their fashion, when I might be just pissed off at them for other reasons bothers me.
I have no idea why Noem wears hats. I know many farmers do so for the reason I started wearing hats—to shade my eyes from the sun. I was never one to wear hats until I was 35 or so. That’s when the flickering sun as I was driving started to annoy me. At first, I only wore baseball caps in the car. Then it just became a habit, and I wore them all the time. I wear them inside stores/restaurants, but usually take them off when I’m eating dinner, but not lunch. I have no idea why the difference, but it probably comes from the habits of co-workers I lunched with.
Now I wear Badgers, Packers or Brewers caps, but in Rapid City I wore Broncos or Rockies hats. I don’t wear political hats, but I do wear political t-shirts. I have no idea why the difference. I never thought about it, until just now.
My physician looking for cancer on my bald head, asked me if I always wore a hat. Yeah, I said. Good, he said, keep wearing it. I will.
Yep, she is a pander bear. And especially now in the world of Trumplandia.
Trump, yes rude and crass and trying to be appealing, was also promoting a campaign item(s) that are on his website.
The grifting and disingenous b.s. is urp-worthy.
My good friend Bob likes hats probably more than most and looks as dapper as any. grudznick often wears a hat when being taken out for breakfast, but always removes it and places it under the chair if breakfasting inside an establishment. Ladies are not required by common custom to remove bonnets or hats when indoors.
I think Ms. Noem looks dandy with her hat. I also think that young Ms. Malsam-Rysdon should be wearing a hat as well. Probably a railroad hat would look best on her. The young lady doing the hand talking is not really the hat-type, and it might interfere with the arm waving, although hats do not hinder Mr. H’s flailing arms at all.
Mr. Trump looks silly in a hat. He should not be wearing hats at all but instead should sport a different coiff.
Maybe we would get a better picture of who Noem actually is if she was wearing a tall pointed hat? Here is a photo that appears to be almost a spittin’ image of Noem:
https://mattsko.com/2012/11/25/sitting-in-the-corner-with-the-dunce-cap-on/
That is a very good resemblance, Mr. bat.
Right on, br’er bear. Hillaryous. And of course she is wearing her pointy hat backwards to prove she is better on offense.
I’m of the age that I can remember when men all wore hats. It sort of went out of fashion for some men, I think, in the late 50s to early 60s.
If you were a painter, you wore a certain kind of hat. Farmers wore broad-brimmed hats until, seed company hats came into fashion in the rural set. You can see in old newsreels that the press had on certain hat styles they often wore propped farther back on their heads, and businessmen put on other styles in darker colors to match their suits.
My dad had a couple hats. His were business hats, which he took off when he got inside anywhere. He didn’t like them much. They were kept in the closet by the front door. I remember as a small boy there used to be “hat check girls” in various eating and entertainment establishments. I never saw “cigarette girls” in person, but you see them in movies up until the 1950s.
The fashion change from hat to hatless for most businessmen, professionals and politicians is often attributed to President Kennedy. l think the change started with Eisenhower, though.
And she can keep that pesky sun off her bald spot.
Like Donald I can recall the days when hats for men were standard wear. I even recall the days when airline attendants, then all female and called stewardesses, handed out free samples of cigarettes to passengers during flights. And the hats that virtually all women wore as a matter of course earlier in the 20th century were a creative sight to behold!
Despite all that, I never have seen a historical or modern era in person, in film, nor in literature, where women wore hats anything like the cap Noem wore during her news conference. It is sui generis.
Hats for men went out of style when JFK came into office.
Who’d of thought in 1989 that CAH would be in style with the likes of Noem and Trump?
Curse you, JFK!
In 1989, MHS administration made sure I did not wear my hat in the building. I adhered to that rule with reasonable consistency.
bcb, please forgive my ignorance, but did you spell sooey wrong? Asking for another friend. :)
Peter Gunn regularly wore a Fedora on his tv detective show, but it ended in 1961. Mike Hammer, who came on quite a bit after JFK, wore a Fedora in his show. (Stacey Keach as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer)
I hear, anymore, only cowboys and Hebrews wear hats indoors as a regular custom.
LOL, “I hear, anymore, only cowboys and Hebrews wear hats indoors as a regular custom.”
Mike was peter Gunn from Fedora or Artesian, not much left anymore. I know that Joe Kapp was born up n west sd Mamie Van Dorn Rowena ,Richard Widmark lived in Sioux Falls. That one of the U. S. Spccer coach did soccer clinics in Sioux Falls.Thats all about I can say about that.Peter Gunn huh.
Craig Stevens was born in Liberty, Missouri. Peter Gunn’s hometown in the tv show was never revealed.
Peter Gunn theme song was a classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oysMt8iL9UE
Craig Stevens was born in Liberty, Missouri. Peter Gunn’s hometown in the tv show was never revealed.
I don’t mind people wearing hats, though I do think it’s nice when they take them off indoors. When I was in western SD no males wore hats to church and those glaring white cowboy foreheads were startling! I got used to it and they were nice people.
I think it’s highly inappropriate to wear a baseball cap at a press conference. Blubbering Bully looks silly and Kruel Kristi looks ridiculous. But anything to please Sugar Daddy. She’s taking her cues from Prissy Pussy Pency. 🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Hats ought not be worn indoors.
As to why the President wears hats, I should expect the answer is that merchandise will not sell itself. Tell me there is not a Yuge sales spike each time he is seen wearing one on TV.
O, he needs to cover the big baldness too.
I have noted, here in the Great State of South Dakota, that those of us who wear hats are much more polite than the out-of-state name-callers who pass through to gawk and complain.
Mr. Trump is not a South Dakotan, as no South Dakotan would ever wear a farmer hat with a suit. Plus, Mr. Trump is an out-of-state name-caller himself.
Hats are a lost art that evolved into billboards on our heads.
My grandfather wore hats that looked classy without any words or logos. My grandmother got a new one twice a year, Easter and Christmas. They were fancy as well. Even though they thought at the time it was the “fashion” I think it was more of a metaphor for class, style and taste.
I’m not or ever will be as classy as those two, I wear hats to keep the uv rays from attacking me. I have enough cancer risks with the Dorito diet…….
I think women’s hats went out of style a few years after men’s hats. I know Jackie Kennedy wore some, but my mother had stopped wearing them before the JFK assassination. She didn’t wear them often anyway. I guess it was too much expense for too little use. And they went in and out of style so fast that only the upper crust could get any use out of them.
Nowadays, women wear big hats to keep the sun off of them. More sporty women wear baseball caps with their pony tails through the back. Or they wear red hats or pussy hats to make a political statement.
I think the British women still rock hats from time to time. And the Kentucky Derby is a time for horses and hats. Susan Braunstein always threw a hat party in Rapid City on her birthday in April. I guess that was close enough most years to Easter, which is another big day for hats.
I don’t know that hats are unprofessional. in this day and age they connote informality. Trump, no surprise, uses hats to advertise himself. I don’t take Trump any more seriously if he has a hat on or off. Same with Noem. Some folks used to slam the way Janklow dressed for press conferences, which was just this side of slovenly. You still listened, even if you gagged at what he was saying. Remember the infantile freak out over Obama’s tan suit? Really, can’t we worry about substance, and overlook the garb?
I’ve been wearing baseball caps a lot lately to corral my uncut, lockdown hair. I hear that there’s a 3-week waiting list for hair cuts in Yankton, now that salons are returning to noemal. My Twins cap seems to make people sad, though.
When talking about post-Jackie O and women’s hat fashions, don’t forget about the modern women’s Red Hat Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Society
If memory serves, Jackie O preferred “pill box” hats.
Bear: Sorry, its The Nation’s podcast (Start Making Sense @ 28:36). Haven’t figured how to link these on my stupid Andriod! Free samples? That must have been on a free trip to SE ASIA?! I am however looking for the referenced BAFERD ball cap to loop occasional ponytails thru. Maybe my fav haberdashery in Buffalo Gap has them.
Stop-sign/speed limit adverse Noem is in too big a hurry talking about “our” tribes with someone “who used to be a Democrat (kristi smirks)” is capless but complements her $1000 sport coat with Camo T-shirt and army green too – tight jeans on TV today. Shout-out to Boogaloo Bois