7 Comments Add your own

• 1. mark baard  |  June 16th, 2008 at 9:40 am

  liam, i feel vindicated as well… i just took my ball of ties, maybe 40 of them, and tossed them into a donation bin!

• 2. Mike  |  June 19th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

  I couldn’t disagree more. For years I struggled with the suit and tie - the fitting, the co-ordinating, the dry cleaning, two button, three button, or four button, stripes vs. solids, skinny tie vs. the windsor knot. The uphill battle from S&K Warehouse with those awful Regis Philban “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” solid on solid looks (I have three shirts and three ties in the exact same color - what is that?) to the Brooks Brothers paycheck killers and all those metro Hugo Boss / Calvin Kline distractions along the way…then I went to Vegas with some friends and we all bought new suits - 3 Piece Suits actually - and we were treated like celebrities the whole time. Ever since I’m on board. Dressing well is like reading Shakespeare - you resist it initially for no other reason then it was required by the teacher, but eventually you should stumble across your own reflection and find some inspiration to stop being such a slob.

• 3. Liam  |  June 19th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

  Mike, I would disagree with the assumption that, if one is not in a suit, one is a slob. Leaving that aside, however, my aversion to the tie is based on the more fundamental belief that, as it is purely ornamental, it is merely a devise for separating haves from have-nots. Further, that if we make assumptions about people based on whether they wear a necktie, where do we draw the line? Do we then make assumptions about people based other aspects of their dress? What about their physical appearance? What about the color of their skin?

• 4. Beau Brummel  |  June 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm

  To quote the nattily striped Charlie Brown, “Sigh”. Such Maoist sentiment from a free market think tank! To “make assumptions” based on appearance is a universal animal instinct; to distinguish between invidious and legitimate assumptions is an act of civilized maturity.

  Ties come, ties go. Free people are always inventing new “purely ornamental” ways to express themselves while covering up the naked truth.

  I hope you’ll at least wear freshly pressed dreariness on Wednesday! - AP

• 5. Stanley Milgram  |  June 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am

  For once, my fair and consistently finite Mr. Brummel, we casually brush shoulders in agreement.

  Kind of.

  “Free” people are indeed, “always inventing new ‘purely ornamental’ ways to express themselves while covering up the naked truth.” Our divergence lies in what we respectively perceive this, “naked truth” and freedom to be. Neckties, new cars, fancy shoes, psychotropic drugs, $8 disposable razors that make us feel like Real Men or Goddesses (traipsing on a beach with silken material streaming behind us), fast “food” that is oh-so-convenient, corrective diets that are also oh-so-convenient, fancy new threads that help us deal with our obsessive tendencies to ingest (figuratively and literally) that which is oh-so-convenient, TV shows that make us feel as if we have some fodder to dream about/ strive for/ obsessive over/ or rely on while trying to desperately to engage other “free” peers in conversation, and so, so much more, are simply subterfuge.

  And not subterfuge ingested by these “free people” through autonomous obedience, but through heteronomous obedience… Freedom is indeed abstract, subject to delusional classification, rarely experienced in its pure form, and almost never fully understood.

• 6. Beau Brummell  |  June 24th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

  Many desires are ignoble, and America fulfills too many of them. Freedom is for the Elite who Fully Understand. Duly noted. Also note that I’ve corrected the spelling of “Brummell”.

  Now turn up my voltage, Dr. Milgram.

• 7. Stanley Milgram  |  June 24th, 2008 at 2:52 pm

  Bah. Not only am I not in the room, but if I were, I’d tell them to subject you to hours and hours of curling footage (a la Clockwork Orange). You’ll get no juice from me, Sir.

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