You don't know Jack
The new issue of Vanity Fair has an eye-opening profile of embattled uber lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The story’s author, David Margolick, was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and had this to say about Abramoff’s fashion sense:
The black hat business is really kind of a bum rap. And on this, I feel very sympathetic to him. He’s an Orthodox Jew, he’s been an Orthodox Jew for 40 years, or almost 40 years. Orthodox Jews cover their heads when they go out, they wear yarmulkes or they wear hats. And in fact, he put on a black hat because he thought that wearing a yarmulke would subject him to charges that he was excessively and recently pious.
So he put on his black rain hat instead, and he got pilloried for it. And I think that part of it all is rather a bum rap.
maybe it is because nobody noticed him wearing a hat or the yarmulke until the indictments?
If I were an orthodox Jew this would make me angry as it suggests he is using my religion as a cover and he is implicating me in his crimes. Needless to say I don’t think his reputation for phoney piety is underserved.
It seems like Abramoff was a Yarmulke in the pocket type – but his choice to cover his head as he is hauled into cusody may, indeed, be an act of clinging to faith as he admits his guilt – a kittel for a Yom Kippur Vidui so to speak – I trace another aspect of the ‘black hat’ vis a vis Jews and Native Indians – see
http://rabbidanielbrenner.blogspot.com/2006/02/wigwam-you-are-too-tense_23.html