Two weeks ago, as the ongoing civil war in Libya began to intensify, thousands of foreign guest workers made their way to the safety of the Tunisian border. In the midst of the throng, BBC news footage showed a man in his twenties wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. A week later, as rebel forces made their way to confront government soldiers, NBC News captured the image of a somewhat older man manning a mobile 50-caliber anti-aircraft gun. On his head, instead of a military helmet, he too wore a Yankees cap.
This seemingly incongruous choice of head gear has less to do with baseball and more with New York's global reputation. It's impossible to overstate New York's cultural symbolism. Viewed as the quintessential American city, New York is where tomorrow's trends in fashion, music, art, cuisine and that always nebulous categaory "lifestyle" are being invented today.
A few years back, while I was visiting the famed Egyptian antiquities museum in Cairo, a group of high school students arrived on what turned out to be a class trip. The female students, being observant Muslims, all wore head scarves. One, though, had a Yankee cap carefully balanced atop her head scarf.
Hip-Hop and Rap, born on Sugar Hill and in the South Bronx, are the lingua franca of pop music worldwide. Is it surprising that those ubiquitous Yankee ball caps made the trip too?
