One of CoutureGate‘s coattails? Political reporters and talking heads feeling moved to air their own dirty laundry to the world by spontaneously sharing their (inevitably more sensible than some VP candidate‘s) shopping habits. Sort of: I don’t know about her, but I’m no fop.
Today, we learn right out of the “Media Notes” gate that Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz “has never shopped at Neiman-Marcus” (indeed, perhaps never even seen the store’s name, given the sudden appearance of a hyphen) but that he:
once bought an expensive shirt at Nordstrom’s, but that was an emergency because I was out of town and on the plane my daughter had attacked, with a crayon, the only dress shirt I had.
Nordstrom (there’s no ‘s)! But, he had no choice.
Yesterday, Kurtz’s Post colleague Chris Cillizza made this disclaimer on MSNBC before giving his two cents to Andrea Mitchell about WardrobeGate:
CILLIZZA: [A]s someone who doesn’t spend more than about $100 on his wardrobe…
MITCHELL: Oh, you look much better than that. You look much more expensive than that.
(And it’s true. That soft charcoal blazer, Chris? Looks like buttah!)
Also yesterday on MSNBC, viewers heard Lawrence O’Donnell’s humble 1988 raincoat-in-Buffalo story (he lost his raincoat while working on a Senate campaign and spent campaign money to get himself a new one and):
O’DONNELL: The FEC lawyer said, what is ithis? We said, it’s a raincoat. He said, that’s against the rules. It was a close call whether you could spend that…
And, Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist had this exchange with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski:
BRZEZINSKI: Charlie Crist, talk to me about Sarah Palin’s clothing allowance. How do you get one of these things?
CRIST: I don’t know. You know, I don’t know. I get my clothes at Dillard’s here in Florida…
… and always, only, from the final markdown rack.
See how they run from labels (and labels). I guess it goes back to this?
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.