I absolutely agree with Lawrence on this one. I remember watching that conference wondering, “When is the NASA director going to speak?” It took me a while to realize this guy in the pink polo shirt *was* the director. Very unprofessional, and hardly serious, especially in a tragic and historic moment like that. The only excuse I can offer for him was that it happened on a Saturday, and perhaps he got rounded up from his golfing duty to show up. At least his performance was better than the smug and smarmy Aaron Brown’s at CNN that day. Apparently Mr. Brown couldn’t be drawn from his golf game. Even Tom Brokaw, by contrast, caught the red eye from the Virgin Islands back to NYC to cover the shuttle tragedy.

“The only excuse I can offer for him was that it happened on a Saturday …”

I thought of that too, except that (1) the shuttle was landing that day, so the program director would certainly have been on the job and be having a press conference on the completion of the flight; and (2) casual dress, even at press conferences, has been the style of the NASA people for years. At the news conference on the Mars landing a few years ago, all the scientists and directors came out for a lengthy press conference wearing knit short sleeve shirts. My reaction was, if you people, who planned and led this mission, don’t take it seriously enough even to put on a jacket and tie, why should I take it seriously?

It’s just one example among hundreds of how the liberation from all “inhibiting” constraints ends up stripping the meaning from everything. Beyond a certain point, the more free we are to “be ourselves,” the more meaningless we are.

At an immigration reform conference in the mid ’90s, I talked briefly about the issue of dress. I said, how can we expect a people who dress in the aggressively sloppy way that Americans now dress to be serious about something as difficult and demanding as getting control of our borders? How can a people who are so indulgent toward themselves be expected to be hard on others? I think the idea sounded nutty to most of the people there, but to me the connection is self-evident.

I don’t want to pile on Ron Dittemore, who for all I know may be a good guy. But I, too, had a distinctly negative reaction to seeing him on TV. Though I can’t remember at all how he was dressed when I saw him, what rubbed me the wrong way was his excessive touchy-feeliness as he spoke — the words, the effeminate pauses, the changes in voice tone, the various pained facial expressions. I found myself wishing he’d be more masculine or something — more straightforward; more business-like; more “professional” somehow. We’ve seen these sorts of post-spacecraft-disaster appearances on TV before, and what comes across looking best is not the “quivering nether lip” style (which looks undignified and weak in an administrator who’s supposed to be “in charge”), but rather the measured, respectful, yet totally professional deportment one would expect from, for example, a military officer, a chief of police, or, to take another example, an astronaut who’s made of “the right stuff.”

The way Pres. Bush delivered his spoken tribute on TV was exactly right, if anybody happened to see it: it was masculine, deliberate, unwavering, never flinching, or pausing unnecessarily, but steady and even throughout, and never touchy-feely whatsoever. His voice did break ever-so-slightly from emotion right at the very end, but that was scarcely noticed.

That being said, public appearances are hard, nobody’s perfect, and I certainly don’t hold Dittemore’s obviously well-meaning but mistaken on-camera style against him. (Now, about his pink polo shirt, on the other hand, that’s a different matter ….. )

I agree with Unadorned about Bush’s speech. He came out, impeccably dressed and the thing I remember most about his speech was the bluntness: “The Columbia is lost.” Or something to that effect. It was rather startling and yet grounding to hear something as direct as that. It was tough to hear it put that bluntly but it needed to finally be said.