Posted on 04/01/2003 8:21:29 PM PST by Pokey78
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke has attracted more comment on her dress sense than her style of delivery. There could be a good reason for that, says Gary Younge
The US defence department's press office has been receiving complaints following its daily briefings. Given the abrasive style and evasive nature of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's delivery and the splits emerging between the politicians and the military, you would think it was about time.
But the complaints are not from peace protesters demanding more information on innocent civilians, or retired generals worried about supply lines, but men who believe that pink is an inappropriate colour to be worn from the Pentagon podium at a time of war.
The focus of their concern is the assistant secretary of defence for public affairs, Victoria Clarke. Or, more specifically, her wardrobe. The fact that at times such as these, not least in an era where women comprise 16 per cent of the US armed forces, men might still find time to fret about the shade of Clarke's plaid jackets rather than the tone and content of her delivery is worrying.
None the less, when you see the first woman to hold the job standing six feet tall in fire-engine red and pastel plaids in a room full of medalled-military blazers it is difficult not to notice. Even the Washington Post, not renowned for its frippery or flippancy, has been pushed to comment that Clarke's dress sense can at times detract from or even confuse the message. "The reality is that personal decisions and professional duties collide each time Clarke stands before the cameras to discuss developments in Iraq," wrote Robin Givhan in the Post on Friday. "It is understandable that some feel uneasy seeing condolences delivered by someone dressed in a pink plaid jacket suitable for Easter Sunday services."
The fact that Clarke, 43, is colour blind is a mitigating factor. "She couldn't tell you the exact colour of what she was wearing," says one senior defence official. But given the advisers to hand in such an image-conscious presidency, it offers only a partial explanation.
"Colour blindness could certainly explain Clarke's affection for jarring colour combinations," writes Givhan. "Or the tendency for her wardrobe to look like a collection of prepackaged separates rather than suits assembled based on mood or whims ... But it does not explain Clarke's decision to wear colour at all."
Either way, as the war goes from aerial bombing to street to street-fighting and the Pentagon takes centre stage, Americans will have to get accustomed to her idiosyncratic style. While she may never get the casting vote on the style council, Torie Clarke is going to become ever more familiar to viewers.
For a Republican party fighting a war far less popular with women than men, Clarke's on-screen presence has a particular currency. You will find her on the party's website, marketed as one of "thousands of women across the country who are providing the local leadership needed to deliver President Bush's compassionate conservative message." Yet while her delivery at the podium is a relief after Rumsfeld's scowl, her manner, let alone her message, is none the less abrupt.
She says she has abandoned the "smart blankety-blank" style that characterised her role as a PR woman in the corporate world when dealing with the press at the Pentagon. Her role, is "just too important". In most jobs "you think, well it isn't a matter of life or death. Here it is life or death matters," she told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Pentagon press corps regard her as a loyal supplier of the government's line of the day. Always on message, even when she is off-screen.
Raised as the youngest of five daughters in a middle-class family in Pennsylvania, her name alone presaged a fearsome if not fighting character. The way her father tells it she was named after Queen Victoria. According to her mother, "her heart valve didn't work so they baptised her right away, and when she made it through, they named her Victoria because she was victorious over death."
A lifelong Republican, she was press secretary for the Bush-Quayle presidential campaign in 1992. When Bush lost she moved into the private sector where she remained until she got a call from Bush junior's administration two years ago.
Referring to herself as the president of the Friends Don't Let Friends Go Back into Government Committee, she was a reluctant recruit. She had been in her present job just six months when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into her workplace on September 11 2001. Later that day, she told the world the Pentagon was still open for business. Since then, with America declaring an endless war, Clarke has acquired an almost permanent presence.
And if her outfits raise eyebrows then it is a response with which she is familiar. As a child, her mother said: "She used to insist on walking around the house in a cowboy hat and leather pants. I think she actually had a holster and a gun." An instinct of which her current employers would no doubt approve.
Isn't she the Freeper known as Torie?Ping.
What is HER number?
Thanks, I was just thinking this smells the same. What the heck, maybe criticizing Clark's clothes will take the press's peabrains off the topic of "the plan." I think she can handle it.
I thought she might sew for herself.
Not to critizise- sewing might be her stress reliever.
She sure is.
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