Thomas Countryman might have been put out to learn on Friday that he had been fired while on his way to an arms-control conference, but as he returns home to lick his wounds, he has one thing to console him: his awe-inspiringly badass hair style.
Countryman appeared on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday to discuss his firing and his opinions on the Trump administration's approach to diplomacy. The most important takeaway from the six-minute interview, which touched upon pressing human rights issues and the need for "genuine debate and deliberation within the State Department," was his unabashedly retro mullet.
Records show that the now former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, who, according to his official biography, is fluent in Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Italian, Greek, and German, has not always rocked such a metaltastic 'do. The Washington University and Harvard alum has been pictured as recently as 2013, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with a decidedly nondescript product of the barber's scissors.
It is unclear what prompted the shift on Countryman's part from just business schlub to king of the party, though historians have noted that the Mötley Crüe Final Tour began in July 2014 and ended in December 2015 following dates in Tokyo, Sölvesborg, Nickelsdorf, Stuttgart, and Milan among other locales, a year and a half span that also saw the former diplomat traveling to pursue America's interests abroad.
Style experts have been unanimous in their praise for the ex-diplomat's sick mane.
"The retro-chic mullet (moo-lay) is THE look for 2017," said Fab Montoya, a well-known D.C. fashionista and editor of the Washington Free Beacon's style vertical who insists on being referred to in the second-person plural. "It reflects both a rugged sense of individualism combined with an expression of frustration with the ordinary person's lack of influence and power in modern society."
"Also the bad-boy look is SO HOT!" they added.
UPDATE, Wed. Feb. 1, 2017, 3:48 p.m.: A previous version of this post suggested unequivocally that Countryman was a style icon. On late Wednesday afternoon questions emerged, however, following an appearance with Brooke Baldwin on CNN in which he appeared to have gotten a haircut. A request for clarification sent via Twitter has not been answered. This story will be be updated continually as more information becomes available.
UPDATE, Wed. Feb. 1, 2017, 4:03 p.m.: A previous update to this story misidentified the CNN reporter that was interviewing Countryman as Carol Costello. It was Brooke Baldwin. We regret the error.