A Christmas Necktie Tale

Every few decades around the holiday season we go through the closet to cull unfashionable neckties. It's a thankless job, but federal law requires men to do it. (This is part of the same statutory scheme making it a felony to rip that tag off your mattress.)

"What's a necktie?" the young'uns are asking. Well, it's a piece of cloth with no known practical function this side of Alex Comfort's Joy of Sex. In the Dark Ages, about 30 years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, every male in America was required to wrap a tie around his neck in the morning before heading off for work, in case he needed a napkin at lunch or suddenly had to sneeze.

There was a time when all fathers, husbands, and uncles could count on getting at least one new necktie for Christmas. Some unfortunate wretches even received two or three. Of course, this was before T-shirts were invented.

The tie almost always came wrapped in a shallow, rectangular box that left no doubt about its contents. Nothing else could fit inside that distinctively shaped box except the dreaded Christmas Necktie. Certainly not the tackle box or that new sand wedge you really wanted.

"Oh, what a surprise," the man was expected to exclaim as he opened it. To lend verisimilitude to this fib he would add, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "You know, I really needed a new tie." Men of a certain age know these words better than the lyrics to Deck the Halls.

At the first opportunity, all new neckties would be transferred to the deepest recesses of a storage closet never to be seen again. Before that, however, Emily Post or some other government official mandated that every adult male in the nation had to wear his new Christmas tie at least once -- no matter how hideous it might be.

We were reminded of those ancient customs the other day when we noticed by the neolithic calendar on our wall that it was time once again to sort through our neckties and see how many we could safely throw away. For most men, every excursion of this kind into the necktie closet is like a bad trip on the dangerous drug of nostalgia. What we found this time brought flooding back memories of someone else's very special Christmas tie.

Back in the '70s, after the Watergate scandal when Gerald Ford was serving out Nixon's remaining term as president, the only U.S. president never elected to national office made an otherwise-routine appearance before the White House press corps during the holidays. It must have been in late December or early January of 1975 or '76.

The next day's news reports mentioned that Ford stepped up to the presidential podium wearing a "predominately" brown necktie he had received for Christmas. One sharp-eyed reporter immediately noticed that the brown swatch hanging down Ford's shirt-front was, in fact, a joke tie cleverly masking a blatant obscenity.

Remember, this was the 1970's, a decade known to modern historians as "the '60s." Blatant obscenities were the order of the day.

According to our mental transcript of the event the reporter asked, 'Where did you get that tie, Mr. President?'

'It was a gift from my children,' President Ford replied proudly.

'Sir, did you notice what the tie says?'

This puzzled the president. 'What it says?' he asked doubtfully, looking down his chest. 'It's just a design. Nice, don't you think?'

The reporter doggedly persisted. "Mr. President, isn't that an obscene word woven into your tie?"

"Not that I know of," the president replied.

The press corps twittered. A few guffawed.

This may strike the modern reader as unkind and disrespectful of the White House Press Corps, but you must remember the times. It was before Fox Cable News. Beltway journalists were still flushed with their success in ferreting out the ugly truths behind that "third rate burglary" at the Watergate. They had not yet learned the avuncular art of dutifully transcribing any ol' thing a president might say, regardless of its patent ridiculousness, and repeating it in print or on television with utter credulity.

How times have changed. The press back then recognized reality even when the president wouldn't. They knew what all men at home that day knew, too, and probably for the same reason. That particular Christmas season every man in America, even professional journalists, had received the same damn gift tie.

Having thoroughly confounded the president -- though it must be admitted he was an easily bewildered man -- the White House reporters moved on to a different topic, and that was the end of that.

Newspapers the next day reported on the press conference. Several mentioned that President Ford had worn "a Christmas tie" his children had given him. Many published photos of the president, although taken at such a distance that the only thing to be seen clearly was the faint suggestion of squiggly diagonal lines. But a number of more intrepid reporters, as we recall, went so far as to add that embedded in the tie was "a common four letter word" about which the president seemed oblivious.

There are perhaps ten thousand web sites that offer old neckties for sale. Google them and you will be astounded. Amazingly, however, none -- at least, none that we could find -- displays President Ford's Christmas joke tie. Perhaps it's now hanging in the back of some archival closet at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library.

Our own copy of the same tie inexplicably surfaced the other day while we were rummaging through a rarely used closet at home. It's a good guess that all over the United States this Christmas season other men will be doing the same. After all, it's that time of the century: get rid of those vintage neckties, men. Make room for new.

Click the tie to read it, if you dare. But don't take it personally. Soon, you'll be seeing thousands of them for sale on Ebay.

CLICK IMAGE TO READ

Panhandle Christmas Crimes

File this in "There will always be a Florida Panhandle."

The Great Bra Caper:

The manager of Victoria’s Secret in Santa Rosa Mall discovered the disappearance of 126 bras after the manager of another store suggested she check her stock.

A similar theft had just been reported at Victoria’s Secret at University Mall in Pensacola.

The bras reportedly disappeared sometime after 8 p.m. on Nov. 18, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff ’s Office report. Their value is $5,460.

Missing are 50 Very Sexy Push Up Bras, 12 Very Sexy Wireless Bras and 64 Very Sexy Flip Bras in various sizes, according to the report.
* * *

On Aug. 22, nearly $5,000 worth of panties was stolen from an open table.

Ladies, if you happen to find some "very sexy" bras under the tree this year, be sure to call 9-11.

Holiday Candy

Better late than never -- our favorite Christmas present this year:

Available from Unemployed Philosophers Guild
or Acme Mercantile of Ann Arbor

The FDA disclosure on the package reads:

"Mints made in USA
Tin made in China"

Wrap Rage

"Wrap rage: Injuring oneself by using a sharp object to try to open hard-to-open plastic packaging like the kind they sell cheap consumer electronics or household items in."

-- Urban Dictionary

Mackenzie Carpenter of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette sometimes is credited with coining the phrase " wrap rage". Others say it was the BBC, which reported more than 67,000 injuries in a single year by people trying to get at the goods once they brought them home.

Whoever came up with the phrase, it's an apt description for the usual consumer response to those clamshell plastic prisons and endless twisties in which everything from computer hard drives and cell phones to Barbie dolls and Dora books are imprisoned. As McClatchey's Jackie Crosby reported a couple of days ago, this is the scene nearly everyone has to face on Christmas morning:

The wrapping paper is in piles. The ribbons are in shreds. Now it's time to get out the heavy artillery: scissors, box cutters, screwdrivers, ice picks, sheet-metal shears, and perhaps a hacksaw or two for good measure.

Freeing the toys, electronics and other gifts of the holiday season from their bulletproof packaging can require the strength of Superman and patience of Job.

"You have to run around the house, find scissors, cut it open, then you hurt your fingers trying to pull it apart, then there's these twisty things you have to untwist, plus the batteries," said Cynthia Salone, 8, of Minneapolis, recalling a recent packaging battle. "It can take 10 minutes to open."
* * *
"It's very, very, very frustrating," said Ann Hunsaid, 76, a retired teacher from Minot, N.D. "Especially for someone like me who is used to simple packaging. I do not follow this new kind of thing."

Most of us assume that manufacturers who encase their products in packages that need a jackhammer to open do so to discourage theft. But there may be more to the story than that. As blogger Sarah Gilbert pointed out earlier this month, it also gives manufacturers control over marketing and display at the retail level.

Consumer Reports posits those two reasons, and more, in suggesting [subscription required to read the whole article] that increased clamshell packaging is due to these factors:

• Plastics. When plastic became cheaper than cardboard, about a decade ago, manufacturers were able to wrap goods in new ways. Many of those options proved harder to open than the cardboard box.
• Safety. Federal safety laws require seals that will show evidence of tampering, and child-safety caps on most over-the-counter drugs. That often makes them adult-proof, too, says Laura Bix, assistant professor of packaging at Michigan State University.
• Theft. Meanwhile, shoplifting losses at retail stores in the U.S. are an estimated $15 billion a year, according to Ernst & Young, leading to electronic tags and big, sealed packaging even for tiny items, so they can’t be pocketed.
• Overseas manufacturing. Products were once largely made in the U.S., but many are now made abroad and must withstand a long sea voyage in a cargo-ship container, says Chris Byrne, editor-at-large of Toys & Family Entertainment, a trade magazine. Rigid plastic containers excel at keeping everything in place.
• “Try me” packaging. Children are encouraged to touch and interact with playthings before buying them. This has led to the creation, for instance, of what might be called Prisoner Barbie--a doll with shackled accessories. They are easy to see but hard to steal, Byrne says.
  

Some suggest voting with our wallets to avoid the impenetrable clamshell. Others say that's hopeless, after three decades of federal prosecutors ignoring federal antitrust laws, too many products have little competition and none that doesn't conspire to adopt the same kind of clamshell packages.

We think the simplest, most effective way of ridding the planet of hard-to-open packages would be for one of the TV networks to launch a new reality show -- one where the CEOs of consumer products companies are put on a desert island and, to earn the right of return, they have to open their own products on camera, using only their bare hands, toes, and teeth.

Until then, we will have to be content with watching Stephen Colbert opening a new calculator: