Cold, Cold, Hatless and No Overcoat

...Mama Gloria is not going to like this; neither do we. Who does he think he is? God!... Hmm, he may have a point there.

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Obama Express: Calvacade of Hats
By Roger Catlin on January 17, 2009 -- 11:54 PM

To cover the daylong train trip by Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their families, from Philadelphia to Washington, the best darn political crew in television was also the most freezing.

Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper led a group of pundits in talking about the changes coming and the event that day, sitting outdoors at the Newseum. It may be a fine backdrop for Tuesday's inaugural parade (if it were the summer). But six floors above Pennsylvania Avenue in the cold consitutes cruel and unusual punishment for pundits.

Was there was a reason they all had to be outdoors in D.C. when every other news anchor on other channels that day was inside? The chill brought sensible hats for others: A knit cap with a brim for Soledad O'Brien; a big brimmed black hat for David Gergen -- not quite a cowboy hat but more like something from down under. Next to him, earlier in the day was Roland Martin, with an even bigger hat. Donna Brazile had a dress hat with a smaller downward brim.

All this hat talk is relevant at least in theory. In the bone-shattering cold gripping the East, it's not smart to go out without a hat. Most of the people going out to see the new president had one on. But Obama, Biden and their secret service agents were all hatless. Blitzer and Cooper were hatless (and Cooper didn't even seem to have an overcoat on).

After president William Henry Harrison spent this much time out in the Washington cold giving a speech in his inaugural, he died 30 days later (though the event then was held in March, and many doubt the story that he caught a cold at the inaugural).

There's is a more prominent assumption that John F. Kennedy put generations of milliners out of business by generally refusing to wear a hat duringhis speech (he did have one on during his own inaugural, though) and setting the fashion signal for modern man: No more hats for men, even in the winter.

By the end of the long day of commentary outdoors, Gergen was starting to punctuate his commentary with sniffles. And he had a hat on. And presumably three more days of such outdoor coverage.

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This picture is not from the Inauguration in Washington, DC; but he's clearly cold -- at least he is wearing a coat.