Afterthoughts and Odds and Ends

The entire column last week was devoted to Sen. Chuck "the schmuck" Schumer's stupid directive that the U.S. Senate will no longer enforce a dress code, ostensibly allowing members to dress pretty much anyway they want to.

Suits and ties will no longer be required attire on the Senate floor. This nonsense was done for the sole benefit of Sen. John Fetterman, who only shows up wearing hoodies, sweatshirts, shorts and sneakers.

Nobody in or out of Congress thinks Schumer's dress directive is a good thing. A senator who dresses down shows a lack of respect for the high office, for other senators, for his constituents, and for the country at large. Not to mention a lack of respect for himself. Eventually most senators (even Democrats) have admitted that they do not like the idea of "dumbing down" the dress code.

But Schumer won't change it back, even though he himself has said that he intends to continue dressing in a suit and tie. I don't think we'll see any senator, other than phony Fetterman, show up on the senate floor dressed in anything less than the proper business clothing. At least not right away.

But here's the problem. I'm old enough to remember when the concept of "Casual Friday" took off in offices around the country. For the last day of the week, men didn't have to wear a suit and tie and women could dress in a more relaxed manner as well.

Most businessmen who liked the concept came to work on Friday in chinos, sportscoat and an open collar shirt underneath. Women wore soft pants, casual blouses, and flat shoes. But it didn't stop there.

Before long chinos turned into jeans or cargo pants. Sportscoats were totally eliminated. Sneakers became the shoe of choice. It simply got ever more casual as time went on. Today (if you come to the office at all) you can wear just about anything you want.

Casual Fridays was only on Fridays but that was only the beginning. In time casual Friday became casual every day and it ushered in the end of the traditional office dress code forevermore.

What happened is very much akin to the broken window theory of crime escalation, which argues that one broken window would soon lead to many more windows being broken: "One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing." Soon crimes increase and get worse.

And that, I predict, is just what will happen in the Senate. At first no one will change the way they dress. Then one day some senator will decide to walk in wearing a suit, but no tie. Then someone will walk in without a tie and without their suit jacket.

It won't be long before some senator comes to the floor in chinos and a sport shirt.

Next will be jeans and sneakers. Little by little all formality will be gone. There's no such thing as drawing a line as to how far the dress code can be relaxed.

Once you start shaving away the rules of decorum and proper attire, you've put dressing down into motion and it's nearly impossible to go back.

As they say, you've opened the floodgates. Or the barndoors. Or whatever it is we open. It's the broken window theory.

On a totally different topic, think about this. Why do we only use "o'clock" when the time is on the hour? We say "ten o'clock' but we don't say "ten fifteen o'clock" or "ten thirty o'clock." If you ask me the time and I look at my watch and I say, "It's eight o'clock," that's fine. But what if it's eight twenty? If I said to you "It's eight twenty o'clock" you'd think there was something wrong with me.

We simply do not use the "o'clock" part unless the time is on the hour. Why not? Discuss among yourselves. I'll expect an answer next week.

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