When Ken Salazar took over the helm at the Department of the Interior, I confidently predicted that this rancher and erstwhile Colorado senator would continue to wear his trademark cowboy hat for public occasions. This would be especially true, I felt, in Western rural locales where a public official wears a cowboy hat -– even with a business suit and a bolo tie -- to signal to the locals that he is a native son who understands and cares about them.

A guy who prefers to be seen in public wearing a cowboy hat is a guy telling you that he does not abide the federal government’s heavy hand. A guy wearing a cowboy hat with a business suit and a bolo tie is telling you he would rather burn in hell than be a willing party to federal crimes like raising grazing fees, capping groundwater withdrawals, coddling wolves, or establishing a national park downwind from your coal-burning power plant. That’s what I thought, anyway.

Well, the Senate confirmed Ken’s appointment on January 20, 2009, and ever since I have been watching the man grow into his job. I will frankly admit that I’m impressed. It looks like he may be on the way to becoming one of the better DOI helmsmen in living memory. I recall that I expected otherwise, and it makes me feel a little sheepish. Make that a lot sheepish.

OK, so what about the headgear thing? Just for the hell of it, I’ve been monitoring Ken’s headgear choices for public occasions. There’s no real science to it -– I mean, it’s not a rigorous kind of study with carefully stated hypotheses, a bombproof sampling protocol, and stuff like that. What I do is look for photos of Ken taken on public occasions and note whether he’s elected to wear a cowboy hat, a baseball cap, or no headgear at all.

My thinking was that this would give me some idea as to whether Ken’s headgear choices have exhibited a regional bias and/or a temporal trend since he took office. In simpler terms, has Ken chosen his public appearance headgear on the basis of which region of the U.S. he is in? We’ll call this regional thing “Western v. Eastern venue.” Do his recent headgear choices differ significantly from the choices he was making soon after he became Interior Secretary? We’ll call this temporal trend thing “initial v. recent” behavior.

I’ve noticed something interesting about Ken’s headgear decisions, and that’s what prompted me to create the quiz that follows.

All of the information for this quiz was gleaned from archived photos of Ken Salazar accompanying news releases posted on the Department of the Interior home page between January 20 and August 20 of this year. Only a single photo was analyzed for each news release.

The photos showed what, if anything, Ken was wearing on his head. The photos were classified as cowboy hat (hat), baseball-style cap (cap), or nothing at all (bareheaded).

Each eligible photo was classified by regional location. “Western-venue” includes Texas, the Great Plains states, and all points west. Everything east of that is “Eastern-venue.”

Headgear choices made during the first two months of Ken’s tenure (January 20 to March 20) are considered “early.” Choices made during the past two months (June 20 to August 20) are classified “recent.”

To cite an example: A photo accompanying an August 8, 2009, news release on doi.gov shows Ken at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore with Acting National Park Director Dan Wenk, Superintendent Bob Krumenaker, and Congressman David Obey (D-WI). Ken and the others are wearing baseball-style caps. The headgear classification of this appearance is cap-East-recent.

If you’ve stayed with me this long, you’re ready for the quiz.

1. There are a total of 38 photos in the January 20 to August 20 series. How many show Ken wearing a cowboy hat?
a. 11
b. 18
c. 23
d. 27

2. There are 13 photos in the recent set (June 20 to August 20). How many of these recent photos show Ken wearing a cowboy hat?
a. 6
b. 8
c. 11
d. 13

3. There are 13 Western-venue photos. How many of these Western-venue photos show Ken with a cowboy hat?
a. 5
b. 7
c. 9
d. 13

4. There are five recent photos taken in Western venues. How many of these recent Western-venue photos show Ken wearing a cowboy hat?
a. 0
b. 2
c. 3
d. 5

5. There are 25 Eastern-venue photos. How many of these Eastern-venue photos show Ken with a cowboy hat?
a. 9
b. 11
c. 13
d. 17

6. There are 8 recent photos taken in Eastern venues. How many of these recent Eastern-venue photos show Ken wearing a cowboy hat?
a. 4
b. 5
c. 6
d. 7

7. What is Ken’s headgear preference for public appearances?
a. cowboy hat
b. baseball-style cap
c. riding helmet
d. yarmulke
e. turban
f. fez
g. propeller beanie
h. no headgear at all
i. not enough information to say

Extra Credit Question

8. In one photo, the headgear Ken is sporting is not a cowboy hat or baseball-style cap. It is a riding helmet. Can you name the occasion or venue?

Answers:

1. b -– Ken sported a cowboy hat in 18 of the 38 photos. That’s just under 50%.

2. a -– Ken is wearing a cowboy hat in 6 of 13 recent photos. That’s just under 50%. The recent trend mirrors the overall trend.

3. c –- Nine of 13 Western-venue photos (69%) show Ken with a cowboy hat. Two-thirds is a huge majority.

4. Now, this is interesting. Just two of the five photos that were recently taken in Western venues show Ken sporting a cowboy hat. That’s only 40%, a considerable drop from the 69% total for all Western-venue photos. More revealingly, all three of the photos taken in Western venues since June 28 show Ken opting for a baseball-style cap (2) or no headgear at all (1).

5. a -– Nine of the 25 Eastern-venue photos (36%) show Ken with a cowboy hat. That’s roughly half the rate for Western-venue photos.

6. a -– Four of the recent eastern-venue photos show Ken wearing a cowboy hat. That’s exactly 50%, which matches the overall trend and the recent trend.

7. i -– I told you at the outset that my little study is scientifically worthless, so don’t try to make too much of it. If you’d like a “takeaway idea” though, here’s something to contemplate. Ken is shown with a cowboy hat in only one of the seven photos taken since July 22, and that one was in an Eastern setting. The other six photos show him wearing a baseball-style cap (3) or going bareheaded (3). Do you suppose that Ken has decided that a Secretary of the Interior for all of the people should make the All-American baseball cap his headgear of choice?

8. Ironically, Ken had to forgo wearing a cowboy hat when it might have seemed most appropriate -– that is, while he was riding a horse in the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade on April 4. Like the other riders, he was required to wear a riding helmet instead.

Postscript: Several photos taken soon after Ken became Secretary of the Interior show him sporting a big black hat during public appearances. Somebody apparently took him aside and explained the connotation of “black hat.” It’s been many months since DOI released a photo of Ken wearing a black hat.