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Requiem for the necktie BY LLEWELLYN KING Special to The Enterprise
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t was ailing before; now in the age of the coronavirus, it’s at death’s door. I write about men’s fashion. Long before we’d ever heard the dread word COVID-19, the decline in man’s way of dressing had begun. Fans of old movies can marvel at how we once togged ourselves out: hats, suits with vests or double-breasted suits, and, at night, black or white tuxedos. In movies and real life, people smoked cigarettes as though the very act of lighting a cigarette was a fashion statement. Yes, good guys (and gals) smoked cigarettes, now it’s only bad guys. We were never quite as dress-conscious as the British, but we had our standards: always a hat, a necktie and a jacket. You couldn’t get into a decent restaurant, club or social gathering without a tie and jacket. Restaurants and hotels maintained loanerjacket closets for patrons. Church meant Sunday best: a suit, no matter how worn and bedraggled. These days men go to church dressed for the gym or the beach, wearing cutoff jeans, Hawaiian shirts and sandals. This dressing demise began, I’m afraid to say, with President John F. Kennedy. JFK had a fine head of hair and seemed to want us to know it, so he went bareheaded, everybody else followed. This must have thrown tens of thousands out of work: feltmakers, hat designers, milliners and shops that sold only headgear. Gone without even a shout in Congress, a mention on the stump or a bring-back-the-hat movement. One could say baseball caps have taken over, but really! What is a baseball cap compared to a fine Homburg, a derby or a sporty tweed cap? Not in the same league, you might aver. Brim up or brim down, hats counted, defined, identified and introduced the wearer. You lifted your hat to women, to superiors or older people, and took it off and cradled it indoors. Hats had their own rules and standards. The place where you now put your roll-aboard on planes started as a “hat rack.” As to the tie, it died slowly at first and then fast. It was pop musicians who gave it a huge shove in the 1970s. They didn’t wear ties. Then high-tech honchos in the 1980s dressed down. Think, Steve Jobs in those turtlenecks. In the last year, ties have gone the way of hats. Only evening newscasters still wear them, and not all of those. Ties are out on most television shows and were going out in business before the lockdown.
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ho decreed that a man would be a fossil if he wore a tie? Who thought we’d look better without them? The shirts men wear are clearly designed to be worn with ties, so all those tieless men you see everywhere look robbed, incomplete, underdressed, as though they forgot something when they left the house in the morning. Or were disturbed doing something naughty. Why make life so hard for those who love men? What are they to give us for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries? The tie served magnificently. They were the perfect gift: easy to give, easy to receive and nearly always welcome. They eased the social ritual of thanking dad, husband or boyfriend for being there. There is, I notice, some attempt to save the day because those who feel it’s now oldfashioned to wear a tie are sporting showy pocket squares. Maybe this works. To me it just emphasizes the nakedness around the neck, where something is missing. Of course, ties have no use whatsoever except to vary the sameness of suits and, for the odd philistine, to be pressed into service to wipe eyeglasses. After the coronavirus, what? Suits may not come back at all, we may all wear only those things that can go into the washing machine and be worn without pressing. Fashion for men seems to have been hanged by the neck. — Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail. com. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
ere it not for the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe economic recession that followed, California’s biggest political story of the year would be the bankruptcy of PG&E, the huge utility that serves most of Northern California. A year and a half ago, PG&E declared bankruptcy due to almost countless billions of dollars in potential liability for killer wildfires caused by failures of its rural transmission lines during high winds — its second bankruptcy in two decades. It’s now poised to emerge from bankruptcy, having settled wildfire claims with a mixture of money — borrowed money — and stock and agreed to enough managerial and operational reforms to satisfy the federal bankruptcy judge, politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the Public Utilities Commission. In doing so, PG&E’s executives achieved their primary goal, which was to stave off demands that it be sold to a new owner — billionaire Warren Buffet was often mentioned — or converted into some other entity, such as a co-op or a public agency.
meet the prescribed metrics, some sort of state takeover is possible, or even likely. It was being widely discussed early in PG&E’s bankruptcy and into this year, but seemed to lose steam as COVID-19 and recession became the preoccupations of politicians and the public.
However, corporate survival also means borrowing huge amounts of money, increasing its debt load to $38 billion, not counting more than $25 billion in wildfire payments. Emerging from bankruptcy allows it to tap a special $21 billion fund created by the Legislature for wildfire compensation. Servicing those debts, spending heavily on upgrades to prevent future fires and otherwise reconfiguring the company will be a heavy lift, because it also must remain profitable if it is to attract the investment capital that all corporations need. All of these expensive conditions will inevitably find their way into the power rates that PG&E’s millions of consumer and commercial customers pay — rates that are already among the nation’s highest. Were the company to stumble again, and fail to
LETTERS Prioritize nutrition Congress has responded to the COVID19 pandemic with strong bipartisan actions, but more needs to be done. COVID-19 is a hunger crisis. Families, and especially children, are experiencing urgent food insecurity, both in our country and abroad. Congress must make nutrition a priority in the next stimulus bill. As an advocate with Bread for the World, I recently wrote to Congress requesting: 1) a 15% increase in maximum SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) to cover a family's food needs through the end of each month; 2) an extension of the PandemicEBT program (Electronic Benefits Transfer cards, used by SNAP recipients) through the end of summer to fill the gap left by interrupted school breakfasts and lunches; and 3) no less than $12 billion in foreign aid to address the global increase in extreme hunger amid the pandemic. For children, especially those under 3, even brief periods of insufficient nutrition can carry a lifetime of consequences, including permanent mental and physical stunting. It is imperative that Congress address, without delay, these emergency hunger and nutrition needs by prioritizing them in the next pandemic stimulus bill. Write your representatives and
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Official legal newspaper of general circulation for the city of Davis and county of Yolo. Published in The Davis Enterprise building, 315 G St., Davis, CA. Mailing address: P.O. Box 1470, Davis, CA 95617. Phone: 530-756-0800. An award-winning newspaper of the California Newspaper Publishers Association.
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owever, legislation that could convert PG&E into a nonprofit, publicly owned corporation called Golden State Energy is on the verge of enactment. Once it’s law, Newsom or a future governor could unilaterally trigger its creation and begin to take over PG&E’s assets, either by voluntary sale or involuntary taking. Given PG&E’s depressed corporate status, such a takeover might be relatively cheap. With its stock hovering around $9 share, it’s market value is scarcely $5 billion, one seventh of what it was three years ago. However, acquisition would also mean assuming the company’s huge debt load. Could it happen? Yes. Should it happen. Perhaps, if PG&E cannot successfully operate as an investor-owned utility. But having such a
senators. A link to the letter template is online at https://wp.me/p3aczg-3PD4. It is important to personalize your letter while including the three requests listed above. Diane Clarke Davis
Advertising on front page Placing an ad across the front page of The Enterprise, above the fold, has dropped newspaper journalism to a new low. I don't subscribe to The Enterprise for ads. Having them at the bottom of the front page is bad enough, but giving an ad center stage and making it more important than the news is wrong. Adney Bowker Davis
The right target to defund There is much talk of defunding the police, which is a terrible idea. We need the real police forces, but campus cops? A more useless breed of spongers does not exist. Off with the campus cops! Use the funds wasted on them to give raises to university staff, the people who actually perform useful jobs! William Estabrook Davis
Rename Fort Bragg The Northern California town of Fort
Speak out President Hon. Donald J. Trump, The White House, Washington, D.C., 20500; 202-456-1111 (comments), 202-456-1414 (switchboard); email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
U.S. Senate Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3841; email: http://feinstein. senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me Sen. Kamala Harris, 112 Hart Senate
Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3553; email: visit https://www. harris.senate.gov/content/contact/senator
House of Representatives Rep. John Garamendi (3rd District), 2368 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515; 202-225-1880. District office: 412 G St., Davis, CA 95616; 530-753-5301; email: visit https://garamendi.house.gov/contact-me
Governor Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; 916-4452841; email: visit https://govapps.gov. ca.gov/gov40mail/
huge utility under the control of politicians is a bit scary. Think Department of Motor Vehicles or the Employment Development Department, two current examples of governmental mismanagement. Speaking of which, at some point the role that the Public Utilities Commission played in PG&E’s debacle should be fully examined. The PUC, whose members are all appointees of the governor, is supposed to ensure that the regulated monopolies it oversees are serving their customers efficiently and profitably. If PG&E was neglecting the maintenance of its grid, allowing it to deteriorate and cause wildfires, where was the PUC? It should have been aware of the neglect and insisted that PG&E’s executives do the right thing. Golden State Energy, if it becomes reality, would also be under PUC regulation — something to keep in mind if that option arises. — CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/ commentary.
Bragg is in desperate need of a name change ASAP! Sure, there will be some relatively minor expenses for residents from the municipal name change, but the cost of keeping the town’s current obnoxiously racist name will be far greater. First of all, no self-respecting Californian could ever possibly justify or countenance any town or city in the Golden State being named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who was not only a traitor and a slaveowner, but an especially intemperate and incompetent military commander as well. That name is nothing to brag about, Fort Bragg. Secondly, why would any patriotic American want to set foot in a town named after an anti-American racist traitor to the republic, like Braxton Bragg? Thankfully, Mendocino County has other equally picturesque communities to visit and spend our money in as tourists. Here are some non-Confederate, proAmerican options for you. Please feel free to choose any one of these as your town’s new name: 1.) Fort Lincoln 2.) Fort Grant 3.) Fort Sherman 4.) Fort Roosevelt 5.) Fort Eisenhower 6.) Fort Patton 7.) Fort Marshall 8.) Fort Bradley 9.) Fort Kennedy 10.) Fort Powell Jake Pickering Arcata
We welcome your letters Addresses and phone numbers should be included for verification purposes; they will not be published. Limit letters to 350 words. Anonymous letters will not be accepted. We reserve the right to edit all letters for brevity or clarity. Mail letters to The Davis Enterprise, P.O. Box 1470, Davis, CA 95617; bring them to 315 G St.; fax them to 530-756-1668; or email them to newsroom@davis enterprise.net.
