I don’t know how they do things in Wyoming, but I was brought up to know that a dark dress overcoat and dress shoes is appropriate dress for somber occasions such as funerals, or say, the commemoration of the liberation of a Nazi death camp. It shows respect for the departed, and acknowledges the seriousness of the occasion. If one wears a hat, it should be a proper hat, which is removed at the appropriate times, and not a baseball cap or knit ski cap.
The people of the United States were represented at the Auschwitz ceremonies by a man wearing an olive-green down parka with his name embroidered on it, and a knit cap with the words “Staff 2001″ stitched into it. (His parka did have a big fur-trimmed hood, but perhaps Mr. Cheney doesn’t like having his vision cut off, since he opted for the ski cap.) On his feet were brown hiking boots.
Yes, this is miniscule in comparison to the other blunders and crimes of this administration, but it’s just embarrassing. It makes us look like a bunch of crass yokels, or worse, that we don’t view the brutal, systematic extermination of millions as one of the most serious and somber episodes in the history of Western civilization. How dare he?!
It’s not like he doesn’t own a proper overcoat. In fact, he was wearing it just days ago, at the inaugural. Where he sat throughout the ceremonies without a hat. Not even a ski cap.
What’s wrong with these guys?
(And don’t we have protocol officers to catch this kind of thing? Or have they been replaced by “we can do no wrong” apparatchiks?)