John Fetterman, the guy who beat Dr. Oz for a US Senate seat in the 2022 Pennsylvania elections, doesn’t dress well. Yeah, it’s part of his small-town smart-ass shtick, but then again, whatever one wears ends up being an aesthetic statement of some kind, even for the most militant anti-aesthete. In some societies, this isn’t true — the Amish, e.g. — and there’s an exception for functional work attire, like protective lab clothes or chainsaw pants. But for most of us, the projection of An Appearance says something whether we like it or not.
There are limitations on one’s ability to “project,” of course, especially for those who are sent into a financial panic by a check-engine light. I remember when I belonged to a church in a well-appointed area near the Research Triangle Park, and some of the congregants called for boycotting Walmart. It was my wife, Sherry — who, like me, remembered periods in life when there was no money to spare — who called out the virtue signaling. A lot of people, she said, can’t afford to shop anywhere except the discount big-boxes.
You can’t see the big view unless you can afford the airplane.
Fetterman is reported to have a net worth of around $800,000, which is poverty-stricken by Senate standards (Rick Scott has a more than $300,000,000), but enviable as hell for the rest of us. I believe the guy, though, when he says he’s still for the ever more precarious working folk and poor in his home state. It seems he’s aesthetically projecting not just some kind of solidarity, but also the simmering “fuck-off” that his constituents feel about politicians.
When Nate Silver, Grand Poobah of FiveThirtyEight, the political prediction site that gave Hillary Clinton a landslide in 2016, called Fetterman out for his rags, Fetterman clapped back: “I dress like you predict.”
Now I’m no fashion cop. My clothier is Tractor Supply, and Carhartt is — for me and my ilk — a designer label bought only on special occasions. And we’re not poor, but we’re also barely on the cusp of “middle class.” Our fixed income is being chewed away at the edges by inflation, so we still do some belt-tightening when necessary. We have enough, though, for now. A decent house with an affordable mortgage, two old but serviceable vehicles, and I even have a Fred Sanford fishing boat I got off Craigslist six years ago for $700. Compared to many, then, we’re still shittin’ in the high cotton, as we said down South.
Fetterman campaigned by saying, “I don’t look like a politician; hell, I don’t even look like most people.” It’s true. He’s six-foot-eight, shaped like an enormous papaya on stilts, with a bullet-headed scowl, unruly facial hair, and visible tats. And he appears to embrace it. Good on ya, John!
Now Fetterman has a suit. I’ve seen pictures. But the Senate abandoned its former dress code in response to Fetterman’s preferred apparel, and now the whole thing has become “news.” Honestly, I wouldn’t give a shit. But the reactions are revelatory.
“It’s a disgrace!
“He’s an affront to the dignity of the office!”
“It’s a sad day in the Senate.”
“This is a material debasement of a storied institution and an absolute reflection of America’s steep decline.”
“Dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions. Stop lowering the bar!”
“If you can’t dress professionally for work on the floor of the Senate of the United States, then do us all a favor and get a different job.”
On and on they go. But . . . (cocks head and squints) this is the US Senate they’re talking about.
In 2022, the US Senate received $101,314,442 from securities and investment firms and $30,666,692 from lobbyists, $73,357,476 from the real estate industry, $22,973,563 from the oil and gas industry, $17,572,146 from agribusiness, and $14,589,139 from the auto industry. You get it.
Taking these legal bribes and accepting industry influence-peddling is neither a disgrace, nor an affront to the dignity of the office, nor the material debasement of a storied institution, nor lowering the bar, nor unprofessional. But every one of these assholes follows the old dress code.
I’m hearing Colter Wall sing, “The devil wears a suit and tie.”
I was around and paying attention on October 11, 2002, when the Senate voted on Joint Resolution 114, allowing the Bush administration to cruelly, dishonestly, and disastrously invade Iraq. It passed 77 to 23, and the 23 who opposed it (21 Democrats, 1 Republican, 1 Independent) were vilified for their lack of patriotism. But this adventure which destroyed millions of lives and cost $8 trillion wasn’t the “debasement of a storied institution.”
In 2008, only 25 members of the storied institution (15 Republicans, 9 Democrats, 1 Independent) voted against bailing out the Wall Street predators who crashed the economy. Wall Street spends a hundred million a year on the Senate and Uncle Sam prints a trillion in bailouts almost on demand. Pay to play, and the Senate is big bucks ROI.
In truth, seldom in history has a more cynical and Machiavellian crowd of soigné villains assembled more power while taking less responsibility for its actions. The US Senate is the most undemocratic organization in the US apart from the Federal Reserve. Wyoming gets two Senators with 583,279 citizens, and California gets two for its 38,915,693?! That’s a 67 to 1 ratio! It should be abolished!
But none of this matters today. Today, it’s about Fetterman’s clothes.
I've always thought that a suit and tie is a costume or uniform. The only reason I have suits is for musical theater. Congress is diabolical theater. Their music is an M-60 on full auto. Or the Hydrogen Bomb.
As they say in Maine, "ayuh."