CHENEY AT AUSCHWITZ….The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan complains today that everyone was dressed properly at yesterday’s gathering to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz except for Dick Cheney:
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children’s clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.
Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one’s country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words “Staff 2001.” It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.
This is not the biggest deal in the world, but it sure is peculiar ? especially since, as the bottom picture from a ceremony today shows, Cheney had a dark overcoat with him. It’s not like he accidentally left it at home or something. I wonder what the deal was?
