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White House Unbuttons Formal Dress Code
- lsb 18y agoWe had a pretty big change with JFK, who made hats seem stodgy. What's next to fall? Jackets? Ties?
- biohacker42 18y agoWhat's the point of a tie? Ties and suits are quite literally costumes, costumes for theater.
- fallentimes 18y agoAnd can be very expensive costumes.
- gcv 18y agoI read somewhere that ties cover up the buttons on a shirt. So while uncomfortable, silly-looking, and a tool for strangulation, they serve a purpose. Jackets, on the other hand, are completely absurd. With the lapels turned outside by the cut, they provide zero warmth in cold weather since they do not cover the chest area. They also are hot in warm weather. Impractical and silly-looking, the worst of all worlds.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoStill less silly than sweatpants and slippers.
- anewaccountname 18y agoGlad to know you only wear a potato sack. Do you spend the absolute minimum on clothes, or do you replace your t-shirt when it gets a permanent mustard stain on it?
- maxwell 18y agoIf attire evolution proceeds linearly, jackets and ties will probably be totally out of fashion in ten to twenty years. Hats seem to have already been in general cultural decline before JFK took office, as with jackets before BHO. http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp
- sown 18y agoThey became down-right uncool when he didn't wear one to his inauguration. A good jacket can make a person look good but modern necties...i dunno, they just look silly on an everyday basis. I'd much like to see the return of flowing Cravats. In the film Nixon you can see Anthony Hopkin's lead charachter wear one for Nixon's wedding.
- byrneseyeview 18y agohttp://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.asp
- sown 18y agoI upmodded you for correcting me. :) I guess it was a sign of the times, then, sort of like Obama's BB.
- Devilboy 18y agoHoly crap it sounds like he really wants to get things done around there! I hope that's a good thing.
- tdavis 18y agoI never thought I'd say this, but... the President seems kinda cool.
- andreyf 18y agoAside: Happy Birthday, tdavis ;)
- Erwin 18y agoLast year, reddit explored just how cool Obama could get: http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/cool_cooler_coolest_and_beyond http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/cool_cooler_coolest_and_bey...
- tdavis 18y agoYes, the "Coolest-est" entry has made me laugh countless times. Every time I see it: still awesome!
- PieSquared 18y agoHeh, the last one has a well-done photoshop effect, even including the reflection on the sunglasses!
- yters 18y agoI don't know if it is a good idea to relax standards in a heavily partisan atmosphere. It's best to keep everyone's cards on the table as much as possible, in such a case.
- inovica 18y agoAs someone from the UK, I really hope that Obama really is "the man" to make change stick. I watched his inauguration speech and I hope that the talk about more sustainable energy really does happen. He does seem a kinda cool guy though and from my perspective it sure looks like the right guy got into office there. Good luck
- Prrometheus 18y agoWhat change? We have a trillion dollar pork bill getting bludgeoned through congress right now. Essentially the President said to congress "Just make it big, and make sure we have some token expenditures on energy subsidies. Otherwise, here's the checkbook. Yes, there's more than a thousand economists against this, but we're going to ignore them and listen to the ones who are Democrats." So far, the new boss looks a lot like the old ones, except being black, young, and charismatic. plus ca change... Also, sustainable energy is an engineering problem (unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't). No amount of Presidential hope-rays is going to make windmills or solar cells more efficient. Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state. Yes, I do hope he's marginally better than what came before. But this attitude that "I hope he's the one to make change stick", I just don't understand. There's only so much change you can make atop the world's largest bureaucracy.
- ewiethoff 18y ago> Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state. Cue the Corn Cartel. Did you know you can use corn syrup to melt snow and ice on roads? No need for salt. No more salt-induced auto body rust. All praise for corn. But seriously, now. I do hope corn ethanol does not get promoted.
- FlorinAndrei 18y ago> unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't Oh wow, stereotyping much?
- jm4 18y agoThese NYT articles requiring registration that have been popping up on here every day are getting annoying.
- graywh 18y agobugmenot
- TooMuchNick 18y agoBugmenot Firefox plugin, so on any login form on the web you can right-click and select "Login with Bugmenot": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6349 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6349
- graywh 18y agoI just use the bookmarklet to open a new window displaying the login information.
- swapspace 18y agoJust search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration.
- redrobot5050 18y agometafilter.com gets around this by just telling all of its members to use the "metafilter46/metafilter" account.
- ewiethoff 18y ago> Just search for the headline on google, and click through that way. No registration. No, that's not guaranteed to work. It's a cookie issue. I have have never registered at nytimes and have seldom been able to read its articles, no matter how I approach the site. Until a few experiments today, that is. I reject all cookies by default. NYTimes confronts me with the registration page when I have cookies disabled. I discovered today that if I go ahead and allow cookies from www.nytimes.com, I can read the article without registering. Allowing for session does the trick; don't store the cookie indefinitely. And accepting cookies from wt.o.nytimes.com and up.nytimes.com is not necessary to read the article.
- peregrine 18y agoProbably as close to a startup White House we will ever see.
- whyleyc 18y agoYou can bypass the registration and view the article directly here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29whitehouse.html?_r=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29whitehouse.h...
- abstractbill 18y ago"I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold." We try pretty hard at Justin.TV not to do things that aren't worth our time, so this really jumped out at me. The (former) president spent 15 minutes of his valuable time giving someone a lecture on what to wear?!
- redrobot5050 18y agoOn a saturday, no less. :) I think the suit-and-tie thing goes back to the neo-conservative's "Turn Back The Clock 30 years" aspect of their movement. While today most companies don't care if you're in Khakis and a button down unless you're in front of TV cameras and/or clients, and most CEOs are aware that workers in casual dress are productive (or so i've heard). Bottomline: 30/40 years ago, before women's rights/civil rights/gay rights/gun regulation, you'd wear a suit if you were going to the White house. Period. Thank goodness we have a much more modern CEO of the US gov, now. He's at put sensibility over tradition in some respect.
- sh1mmer 18y agoYou have clearly never had a maid to do all your laundry, ironing, etc ;) Seriously though as someone who went to a high-school where a shirt, suit and tie was mandatory the theory is it inspires a certain kind of behavior. If you are in formal-ware then it's a sign you are working. You change when you get home. Personally I don't buy it though and now I work in the internet industry so I don't have to, awesome.
- fallentimes 18y agoWhen people dress up every single day, it says to me that they care more about playing business and looking pretty than actually getting shit done. I understand it for certain ceremonies, funerals, etc, but outside of that, it seems like an utter waste of time.
- notauser 18y agoIn the wonderful future I live in, we have non-iron shirts that look fine (thank you M&S) and dry cleaning services pick up. 30 seconds a day to do up a tie is a pretty good investment when you consider how many people there are out there who _do_ think it is important, especially when you consider how many people in that set have money they might be persuaded to give to you.
- pwim 18y ago"Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat." So much for the environment and reducing waste...
- redrobot5050 18y agoUnless, like carter, he orders solar panels for heating/cooling on the white house, which seems likely.
- andrewf 18y agoOn the plus side he doesn't drive to work.
- jedc 18y agoMy college roommate was from Hawaii, too. Same thing; our room was closer to a sauna than a freezer in the winter. Just a bit of a cultural thing...
- jonknee 18y agoWow, I never knew GW was such a stickler for formal dress and punctuality. That kind of goes against his cowboy persona. Interesting though, I love reading about stories like this. All presidents have interesting quirks. > "I’ll never forget going to work on a Saturday morning, getting called down to the Oval Office because there was something he was mad about," said Dan Bartlett, who was counselor to Mr. Bush. "I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold." > Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time. In the Obama White House, meetings start on time and often finish late.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agomeetings start on time and often finish late Er. This is an impossibility, right? I mean, if your meeting finishes late, that means your next meeting must start late too, right? Sorry to be so picky. Just the logic of that sentence was worrisome. It would work with only one or two meetings a day, but as president that obviously couldn't be the case either. If your meetings are ending late, they're also starting late.
- cconstantine 18y agoIt's possible that meetings aren't scheduled back-to-back. If there's a 15+ minute gap between meetings it's possible to end one late and still start the next one on time.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoI've seen a lot of different configurations just to address this issue. In the end, in the real world, if your meetings run late, they start late. 15 minutes doesn't matter that much. It's kind of like the guy who only smokes at certain times each day -- makes him feel better that he's doing something about his smoking, but it's just a mask and has face value only. Reality is reality. Screwing around with artificial end-times for meetings rarely ever prevents late meeting people from continuing to run over into the next meeting.
- fallentimes 18y agoFull text so you don't have to register: http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=bca86 http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=bca86 Related: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/the-canary-at-the-new-york-times-grows-louder-as-internet-advertising-keeps-dropping/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/the-canary-at-the-new-y...
- ewiethoff 18y agoThe other day, I saw a photo of the President of France and his wife walking on a beach in their bathing suits. (!) It occurred to me that here in the U.S., we don't show the President with bare arms and legs. Bill Clinton was big on outdoor jogging, and started out his presidency jogging in gym shorts and a tee-shirt or sweat jacket. But pretty soon, pressure from the press or a staff person made sure he always wore a spiffy jogging suit, i.e., no bare arms or legs.
- sgk284 18y agoThere are pictures of Obama at the beach while he was still president-elect. The dude is ripped. This isn't on the beach, but it's the first I came across: http://www.tmz.com/2008/12/22/barack-hard-abs/ http://www.tmz.com/2008/12/22/barack-hard-abs/
- ewiethoff 18y agoUpmod for RuPaul link farther down that page. Now, that's Change!
- FlorinAndrei 18y agoBush versus Obama. Appearance versus substance. Let's make it seem ok, versus let's actually move things forward.
- miked 18y agoObama during the campaign: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." Obama now: (from Axelrod) "He's from Hawaii, O.K.?" said Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there." Jimmy Carter at least wore sweaters when he demanded lower thermostats. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022681.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022681.php From another Obama speech: "If you want to change the world, the change has to happen with you first. I ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done. in America for two hundred and twenty-one years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."