“It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”
—H.L. Mencken
Much has been made of the Senate’s recent dress code accommodations for gigantic slob Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who prefers a pair of basketball shorts and hoodie to the classic suit and tie.
Hot takes have been made. Pearls have been clutched about something called “decorum.” The alleged affront to the august and regal Senate has been widely condemned throughout all ideological corners of the media.
Sure, whatever. John Fetterman, in more ways than one, is a walking insult to the concept of representative government.
But after much reflection, I don’t actually care that he is ostensibly degrading the prestige of the Senate or any other government body with his hoodie-and-gym-shorts routine. It deserves to be degraded because the creatures that inhabit it are unworthy of respect or admiration. Degrading it might prove to be the only useful thing Fetterman does in his entire course of public service.
Modern Congress is less like the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” ideal of the statesman and more like a pack of hyenas gobbling up the rotting carcass of the dying American middle class. There is no dignity to be found there.
In the modern day and age, the professional politician, in his best form, is a lowly, treacherous goblin whose good behavior must be maintained by way of a tight leash and sufficient fear of his constituents at all times. He does not deserve the benefit of camouflaging his baseness in the respectable business garments of his betters.
I understand the argument for a respectable Congressional dress code. The day may come when a semblance of decency and honor returns to the People’s chambers and such a code is warranted. Until that day comes — and it might never — I’d like to humbly propose two alternative Congressional dress codes to replace the outdated one.
Streetwalker regalia
Politicians are almost without exception not functionally different than common prostitutes, the only notable distinction being that prostitutes do an honest day’s (or night’s, as it were) work for their income and the nature of their clientele.
Accordingly, Congressional members’ dress should reflect this reality: fishnet stockings, high heels, uncomfortably short skirts, bare midriffs with neon green spaghetti straps, uncommon volumes of makeup to cover up the shame on their dirty faces, the whole nine yards.
The classic “NASCAR dress code”
This proposal, which I didn’t come up with myself, has been around for some time. The basic gist is that members of Congress should be made to wear the logos of the financial interests that pay them in much the same way that NASCAR drivers do with their sponsors.
The two-fold benefits of such a system would be reminding the public and themselves that they are, in practice, mere ignoble stooges for the interests that support their campaigns and largely if not wholly dictate the votes that they cast.
For example, when Congress allocates endless war funding, the esteemed members who authorize it are festooned with giant Raytheon and Boeing insignias stitched into their shirts. When a Democrat or Cato Institute RINO advocates open borders, we’ll be blessed with an enormous, glaring SOROS FOUNDATION patch right on his lapel. The public can then much more easily put the puzzle pieces together.
Were either of these alternative dress codes enacted C-SPAN would certainly be much more entertaining, and the business of government would be much more honest.