Nixon's Weird-Ass White House Uniforms (1970) w/ Avery Trufelman

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2022

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s April 4th. This day in 1970, Richard Nixon’s great White House uniform experiment is coming to an end.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Avery Trufelman to talk about Nixon’s ill-fated design for new uniforms, what message he was trying to send — and the very weird afterlife of these uniforms once they were packed up into boxes. It involves Alice Cooper.

Be sure to check out Avery’s excellent Radiotopia series “Articles of Interest.”

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And don’t forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, coming soon from Radiotopia.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich, Executive Producers at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody African.
0:10.0	This day, early April 1970, bring out the mothballs, bring out the boxes because the new Secret
0:16.2	Service uniforms are being packed up and shipped off to, well, we don't really know where
0:20.6	at this moment because here's the deal.
0:23.0	Earlier in this year, President Nixon had cooked up a plan to refresh the uniforms among the White House staff.
0:29.0	He felt that the existing uniforms people were wearing around the White House were quote slovenly so he
0:34.4	called up Washington DC Taylor Jimmy Muscatello if you're in the uniform
0:39.4	industry that name probably rings a bell for the rest of us I don't know
0:42.2	Jimmy Muscatello anyway he calls up Jimmy he says Jimmy that name probably rings a bell for the rest of us. I don't know. Jimmy
0:42.8	he calls up Jimmy he says Jimmy I need you to rework these uniforms and what
0:47.4	he came up with for these new uniforms we will describe it but it's safe to say
0:51.8	no one was feeling it. The staff hated them. The DC press mocked it.
0:55.9	Foreign leaders visiting the White House were like, what's going on with these uniforms?
0:59.7	So after a few awkward appearances, the uniforms were packed up, never to be spoken of again
1:05.3	until now on this podcast where we are going to discuss Nixon's secret service sartorial situation.
1:12.4	Here, as always, are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and
1:14.7	Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there.
1:19.1	The story's got me a little punchy. A little. Our special guest for this episode is Avery Truffelman
1:26.5	brilliant radio reporter part of the radio tope family long time at 99%
1:31.1	invisible and moreover the host of the series articles of interest which takes a kind of very
1:36.4	serious but also very fun look at what fashion and clothes mean.
	...

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