Monica Hesse writes in her Washington Post OpEd “What was William Barr’s fleece vest trying to tell us?” that “he attorney general was working a distinctly “River Runs Through It” cosplay vibe: a tan half-zipped fleece vest over a checked button-down shirt, and in the background, a roaring fire.”
You can view the interview with Jan Crawford on "CBS This Morning" here.
Hesse contrasts Barr’s apparel worn in this interview with the formal buttoned down FBI man way Robert Mueller dresses.
We all know how Donald Trump dresses what with the long usually red tie and the open jacket. Chris Christie revealed that he is the one that suggested the long tie for their supposed slimming effect. He should know. They make him look like he’s a marathon runner, staggering his way to the nearest KFC...
Author Hesse suggests he is deliberately dressing to show he is a man of the people who is to be trusted like a a Cub Scout earning his Webelos badge.
She goes on to write:
The collared shirt/fleece vest combo conveys a very specific brand of masculinity. A trustworthiness. A preparedness. A mild, sporty virility — fleece is a performance fabric — revealing just enough visible Oxford button-down to reassure onlookers that its wearer could duck into a phone booth, Superman style, and then comfortably command a boardroom.
Last year, the Wall Street Journal dissected this particular clothing combination and deemed it “the capstone of a new corporate uniform.” It was useful, the article offered, both for transitioning between worktime and playtime, and for hiding a potbelly. A single-purpose Instagram account called Midtown Uniformdedicates itself to capturing collared shirts/fleece vests in the wild; it has 140,000 followers.
On a man of Barr’s age — he’s 69 — the fleece vest takes on a grandfatherly quality and bestows automatic folksiness, which Barr spent the interview leaning into.
He used homespun words like “nooks and crannies” and “cahoots” — as in, “it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Russians.” He invoked his 30-year relationship with Mueller, and then his own mortality: “Everyone dies.” He repeated his earlier assessment that a letter sent by Mueller’s staff, which expressed misgivings over Barr’s initial communications to Congress, was “a little snitty.”
In a sophisticated way Bill Barr is playing a more complex theatrical game than Trump ever does because while his audience was initially made up of CBS viewers he knows Fox Viewers will see clips of his interview.
I doubt a subliminal message being convey by his sartorial choice and his folksy language will alter the opinions on his critics who see him for who he is, a Himmler to Trump’s Hitler.
I think he carefully with malice aforethought (to use the legal term) decided to dress this way for these specific reasons.
What do you think?