White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

The Ties Don’t Bind Anymore

January 27, 2014 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

A nationwide alert, no, a worldwide alert, should be issued for the necktie. It is in great danger. It is disappearing. Soon it may be consigned to history, to live on only in old movies, like people smoking and men in hats.
 
I am not sure who signed the death warrant for the necktie, but I have my suspicions. It is a long chain of perfidy.
 
First, there was Hollywood. Actors who appear on TV talk shows – and most actors do more appearing on talk shows than acting, in the hope that this will get them jobs, so they can do more acting than appearing on talk shows – did in the necktie. One cannot calculate what these innocent little strips of cloth did to the Hollywood Hills crowd – but actors will not be caught in a suit and tie unless they are playing someone who wears a suit and tie.
 
Then there is the dotcom crowd; billionaires who declared by their actions that creative people ought to dress as though they worked for a landscaper not the estate owners. Remember Steve Jobs, who starred in many iterations of his own show “Genius in Jeans”?
 
Well Jobs was a genius, but he was also dressed like a slob, flaunting an everyman image when he was anything but. Now every man is going around the way Steve Jobs did, except minus the genius and the billions.
 

No! No! For me the suit and tie is my native habitat. It is where I am secure — as safe as ordering chardonnay.
 
It all began with my first day of school, when I first put on what was to become the suit of my life: shirt, tie, jacket, hat or cap. When I left school, my father bought me a suit, two shirts and four collars (those were the faraway days when shirts had detachable collars) and told me I would be paying rent if I chose to stay at home. Who said the good old days were so good?
 
My first serious sartorial crisis was at a newspaper in London. It was Saturday, and I ventured in in a sports jacket tie and flannels. The news editor (city editor) exploded.
 
“Are you going to a cricket match?” he demanded.
 
“No, sir, I thought it would be all right, as it is Saturday.”
 
“All right? It is not bloody all right! I cannot send you to Buckingham Palace dressed like that.”
 
“You want me to go to Buckingham Palace?”
 
“No! I want you to go home and contemplate a career change.”
 
So I stuck with a suit and tie, but it did not save me awkwardness. At a party in Tel Aviv, given so that I could meet members of the Knesset, I showed up in a summer suit and tie. I was the only man in a suit. The only man with a tie. The only man with a jacket. The odd man out.
 
I trailed around China, as a member of the press corps accompanying President Clinton on his visit. My colleagues joke about my formality of dress, so I took the plunge. When we went to the Great Hall of the People, off Tiananmen Square, to watch Clinton appear with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, I went casual.
 
By some secret telegraph, to which I was not privy, my colleagues dressed up; every man in a jacket and tie except me, looking ridiculous and disrespectful in a golf shirt. That is what happens when you let go of your principles.
 
Sometimes sartorial failure is collective. At a U.S.-Japan conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, the first morning the American delegation, including myself, showed up in island wear. The Japanese delegation wore formal suits. After the refreshment break, the Americans had rushed to their rooms to get into suits and the Japanese to get into island wear.
 
If President Obama were to appear at an international conference without a tie, it would be all over for the necktie; it would move from the endangered species category to the extinct. He would do it in as thoroughly as bareheaded Jack Kennedy did in the gentleman's hat. Are we better off, I ask you? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: clothing, dotcoms, men's hats, neckties, President Clinton, President Kennedy, President Obama

The Virtues and Vices of a Press Secretary

September 18, 2009 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

 

The stature of some press secretaries grows the longer they are away from the podium in the James S. Brady briefing room at the White House. Others fade quickly. Brady himself is known more for his role in fighting for gun control than he is for his time as Ronald Reagan’s spokesman. His tragic wounding and subsequent disability dwarf whatever he said in his press briefings.

Jerry terHorst, who resigned after only a month in the job because his boss, Gerry Ford, lied to him, was a hero to the press for about as long as he had been press secretary. He ended up working for the Ford Motor Company.

Bill Clinton’s second press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, had a rough ride in the job and a modest career in journalism since then.

Among the revered are Marlin Fitzwater, who served George H.W. Bush; Jody Powell, who was Jimmy Carter’s press secretary and has just died of a heart attack; and Mike McCurry of the Clinton administration. George W. Bush burned through two press secretaries before he tapped the beloved Tony Snow and the admired Dana Perino.

Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, gets mixed reviews. He said that he talked to Powell and others about the job, but he executes it in his own eccentric way. This has some of the White House press corps up in arms and others giving him a passing grade. It is a classic case of where you sit.


The irritation begins with time-keeping. For Gibbs, but not Obama, nothing seems to go on time. The principal press briefing–the one seen on C-SPAN–is scheduled the night before, and reporters are e-mailed this along with the president’s schedule for the next day. Sometimes, this schedule arrives after 8 p.m., making the planning of the next day difficult.

That is only the beginning of the time problem. Invariably, the briefing time slips the next day. Updates delay the beginning of the briefing by one or more hours. But that is not final: Gibbs may make his entrance 20 or more minutes late and without apology.

Then the fault lines within the press corps really open up. They have to do with who gets to ask questions and who is shunned—and this, in turn, has to do with who has assigned seats and sits in the first two rows.

There is ugliness here. Here is class warfare by employment, and here is an unwitting exposure of the White House’s hand.

Clearly, television counts more than print–even dominant print outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Likewise, it is revealed in Gibbs’ world that the Associated Press trounces Reuters and Bloomberg. The foreign press gets very short schrift.

Gibbs’ clear favorites are the television networks and a new crop of correspondents he got to know on the campaign trail. Correspondents like Chuck Todd of NBC are often engaged in a colloquium to which the three dozen or more other correspondents are just spectators.

If you are not one of the favored, you sit in one of the back rows with your hand in the air for favor of recognition to ask a question. It does not happen often.

There is much less criticism of the substance of Gibbs’ answers than there is with his tardiness and favoritism. Gibbs will contentiously argue a point with a reporter, but he also will refreshingly admit when he does not have the answer. Also he does not indulge in dead-end referrals, such as “I refer you to the CIA,” or “I refer you to the vice president’s office.” George W. Bush’s first two press secretaries, Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, did this with exasperating frequency. Snow turned away wrath with philosophy and Perino handled heckling press with humor and efficiency.

Unfortunately, Gibbs’ fascination with a small number of TV reporters has carried over to the full-blown press conferences. The chosen few are again the chosen few. The rest of us are right there with the plotted plants: to be seen but not heard.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Ari Fleischer, Associated Press, Bloomberg, C-SPAN, Chuck Todd, Dana Perino, Dee Dee Myers, James Brady, Jerry terHorst, Jody Powell, Mike McCurry, NBC, President Clinton, President Ford, President George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, President Reagan, Reuters, Robert Gibbs, Scott McClellan, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tony Show, White House daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Make Public Broadcasting Great Again by Shaking It Up

Make Public Broadcasting Great Again by Shaking It Up

Llewellyn King

The animus that has led President Trump to order an end to federal funding of PBS and NPR isn’t new. Public broadcasting has been an irritant to conservatives for a long time. Conservatives say public broadcasters are biased against them, especially PBS; they are a kind of ground zero for all things “woke”; and they […]

California Doctor Opens a New Front in Cancer War

California Doctor Opens a New Front in Cancer War

Llewellyn King

In the world of medicine, immunotherapy is a hot topic. It has uses in the treatment of many fatal diseases, even of aging. Simply, immunotherapy is enhancing and exploiting the body’s natural immune system to fight disease. Think of it as being like a martial art, where you use an opponent’s strength against him. Call it medical Judo. Dr. […]

How Trump and Technology Have Turned the Press Corps From Lions to Hyenas

How Trump and Technology Have Turned the Press Corps From Lions to Hyenas

Llewellyn King

Political messaging isn’t what it used to be. Far from it. It used to be that the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times were an agenda for action. This power was feared and used by successive presidents in my time, from Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden, but not by Donald Trump. […]

Rare Earths Are a Crisis of Government Neglect

Rare Earths Are a Crisis of Government Neglect

Llewellyn King

An old adage says “a stitch in time saves nine.” Indeed. But it is a lesson seldom learned by governments. As you struggle through TSA screening at the airport, just consider this: It didn’t have to be this way. If the government had acted after the first wave of airplane hijackings in the early 1960s, we […]

Copyright © 2025 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in