Never in history has one hat triggered so many.
Now the Washington Post hates President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats.
The Post’s fashion desk, which has idolized the fashion trends of former first lady Michelle Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi but slammed the president and his wife’s threads, has condemned the red “MAGA” hat as a sign of hatred.
“The MAGA hat speaks to America’s greatness with lies of omission and contortion. To wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag. The look may be more modern and the fit more precise, but it’s just as woeful and ugly,” wrote critic Robin Givhan in Saturday’s Style section.
“The hat has become a symbol of us vs. them, of exclusion and suspicion, of garrulous narcissism, of white male privilege, of violence and hate. For minorities and the disenfranchised, it can spark a kind of gut-level disgust that brings ancestral ghosts to the fore. Here, in 2019, their painful past is present,” she added.What sparked her rage is unclear, but she mentioned last week’s media sensation over a high schooler wearing the hat smiling and staring at a native American who was banging a drum in their faces. The story has become a symbol for how the Left and the Right can look at the same image and see different worlds.
Showing her view, Givhan wrote: “The hat figured prominently in the viral video of young Nick Sandmann’s eye-to-eye encounter with the more senior Native American drummer Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial. Sandmann stood his ground. He had every right to remain there, the high schooler said during an interview on “Today.” Sandmann did not seem to consider whether it was actually the right thing to do.”