Relax liberals. All those Donald Trump campaign hats you see out there don't necessary mean the wearers support The Donald. Many of those hats are really being worn by hipsters making an "ironic" fashion statement. Such is the laughable premise put forth by New York Times political reporter Ashley Parker. In addition, Parker claims that the Trump campaign hat, which is a popular wide-brimmed baseball style hat, is some sort of exotic fashion recycled from the past.
Here is Parker assuring her readers that many of those Trump hats are really being ironically worn by hipsters:
An old-school, wide-brimmed rope hat — some in white and navy, others in red and white — has seemingly become the ironic must-have fashion accessory of the summer.
It is the “Make America Great Again” campaign hat first worn in July by Donald J. Trump in Laredo, Tex., and since spotted on hipsters from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles and in the football locker of Tom Brady, not to mention on the heads of the hundreds of Trump loyalists at his rallies.
What a relief that must be to Parker's liberal readers. All those Trump campaign hats out there do not signify his growing popularity because many of those hats are being worn by hipsters making an ironic fashion statement. Another reason put forth by Parker for the popularity of the hat for hipsters is the supposed outmoded charm of that style as if it were like bringing back Civil War era kepi hats:
The hats’ appeal seems to rest partly in their studied outmodedness (think the 2.0 version of the trucker hats repopularized by millennials) and partly in their uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment, with 17 Republicans vying, circuslike, for their party’s nomination.
“I’m at a loss to describe the ironic charm of the hats,” said Nu Wexler, a public policy spokesman at Twitter who received one as a gift from a colleague. “It’s a huge hat that looks like something you’d wear at a golf club in South Florida in the ’80s.”
I hate to break the news to Parker and her hipster friends but the "old school" Trump campaign hat style, with the brim wide enough for printed messages, has been continuously popular for decades. A week before Trump even announced he was running for president, a trip to almost any flea market would have revealed card tables stacked high with that same exact style of hat with a variety of messages printed on them. Is Parker so cut off from popular culture that this obvious fashion fact somehow escaped her notice?
