Judging a man by the color of his suit

You’re on holiday, as am I, so we need not tarry long today. It will take us barely a minute to dispense with Suitgate.

Ever since President Obama showed up at a Thursday press briefing in a tan summer suit, the idiocracy has been in overdrive, spewing out tweets (such as “Me no likey, skin-colored suits don’t scream POWERFUL” and “Obama sends the wrong message to our allies, once again he fails to understand optics”), and video harrumphs (Congressman Peter King, on a right-wing website: “There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. When you have the world watching…for him to walk out – I’m not trying to be trivial here – in a light suit, light tan suit…”)

I’m not trying to be trivial here…Gotta love that line.

Yeesh. At least nobody has yet suggested that Obama wore tan to signal his solidarity with ISIS, or that he wore tan because it’s the Kenyan color of surrender. But who knows what’s out there.

Of course, this is the kind of junk that women politicians have to deal with all the time; Hillary Clinton’s clothes, hair, and makeup have been critiqued ever since she wore a headband on 60 Minutes in 1992. Maybe it’s rough justice that men should be held to the same trivial standards, although the results are equally moronic. Such as these tweets: “You can’t declare war in a suit like that” and “You’re not the president of Sears” and “Nothing says to the int’l community that Pres. Obama means business better than a tan suit.”

Nah, you’d never see a Republican icon wearing a suit like that…oh wait – what’s this? And this? And this? What could possibly explain the critics’ willfull amnesia?

Gee, I don’t know. Maybe the real problem isn’t the color of the suit, but the color of the man who wears it.

 

 

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