Yesterday we implied that those homeless vets in Seattle who received $16,000 in proceeds from the sale of Tom Bihn’s “famous label” T-shirts might have been less comfortable with the whole idea if that money had come directly from sales of the company’s man purses. But that was before we saw these pictures of Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jim Hood sporting a Tom Bihn bag in downtown Baghdad, Iraq.

He writes the company a note with the pictures:

My name is CW4 Jim Hood. I am a Blackhawk pilot in Baghdad, Iraq with the 1st Armored Division. I bought a Brain Bag with the Snake Charmer, Monolith 2 and Freudian Slip for my new Dell Inspiron 8500. I absolutely love this backpack! My wife is here with me (she’s a Major in 1AD) and we drove down to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) HQ’s which is in the old presidential palace. . . . I store my water and all my work plus my Dell in the bag. The back support is perfect for the long walks to places. Hope you enjoy the pics!!

Granted, the bag CW4 Hood is wearing is a backpack, and one that — we conclude from the list provided on the Tom Bihn website — does not feature a care label casting aspersions on any president in any language. But clearly in our comment yesterday we gave short shrift to the great familiarity current and former members of the military are likely to have with . . . uh, rugged luggage.

The Satchel Pages will certainly not insist on calling a bag carried by any brave male member of our armed forces a “purse” (and especially not to his face). The Tom Bihn “Brain Bag” CW4 Hood praises is a bag, and he is a man.

Those two things together are our beat.

• Tom Bihn Bags in Iraq [Tom Bihn]
• Veterans Day [Tom Bihn Blog]
• The Brain Bag [Tom Bihn]
• Why our president doesn’t like man purses [The Satchel Pages]

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Backpacks, Commentary, Man Bags, Manufacturers, Military Bags, Role Models. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.