You can learn a lot from a woman’s purse.
Men learn this as little boys; it may be the first thing we learn about women. We have to fit everything but our keys into a little wallet that must fit in our back pocket without making it too uncomfortable to sit – but women get to put everything they own into their purses.
So we spend ten or twenty dollars on a wallet to last ten or twenty years, and women will spend hundreds of dollars – or even more – on each of several purses they will rotate in service, as luggage, makeup case, toolbox, souvenir holder, and sometimes, perhaps, wallet too.
It’s an industry of its own. While the man’s wallet is an afterthought of a men’s clothing or accessories line, the purse is its own business model, with manufacturers and retail outlets entirely devoted to the purse. Low-end or high-end, leather or fabric, designer or knock-off, the purse is one of the accessories shown off at a party or named when a celebrity arrives at an awards ceremony.
But this week, of all weeks, one particular purse is at the center of a media firestorm. Kristi Noem, former governor and current Homeland Security Secretary, is in the news for having had her purse stolen.
In public.
At a restaurant in Washington DC.
She had a wad of bills in her purse – about $3000 in cash – along with her federal ID as a cabinet secretary and all those other things women carry in their purses – apartment keys, makeup, medication, etc. She was taking the family to dinner; distracted by kids and grandkids, a masked man was able to grab the purse and get away before being noticed.
There are lessons to learn from every crime. Here are just a few of the lessons from this one:
Crime:
There is brazen crime everywhere. Our nation has over 30 million illegal aliens at present, hundreds of thousands of whom came in as gang members and other types of independent criminals, to add to the huge number of native-born criminals here already, One must assume that there are criminals around at all times. Many states don’t even prosecute purse snatchers, shoplifters, and other “small” robberies; this adds to the number of such criminals on the streets.
Women know how to protect their purses, they just don’t always do it. Just as a man should always keep his wallet in a buttoned pocket, a woman should always keep her purse in hand, generally looped around the neck. The busier the locale – restaurant, department store, shopping mall, museum – the more likely it is that a criminal will find an opportunity in the congestion of shoppers, diners or tourists.
The Purse:
Purses can be made with protective designs – zippers and snaps, flaps and clasps. With so many varieties available, there’s no reason to buy a purse that doesn’t have such safety measures. And if you have them, they’re no good if you don’t use them. If the Homeland Security Secretary can be robbed, anybody can. Keep every closure closed so it can’t be plundered, and keep the strap around your neck so it can’t be grabbed.
Just as robbers are attracted to known designer brands of watches or automobiles, they recognize expensive purses as well. The above security measures are always needed, but all the more so when the logo on the bag itself shouts “money.”
The Money:
When most readers heard about this story, they went into shock at the wad of cash. For most of us (admittedly, this writer included), the idea of carrying $3000 in cash seems outlandish. But there are reasons.
Large or unusual totals cause a person’s credit card to be paused or checked, triggering worthwhile but disruptive security measures at the bank, especially when you’re on a tight schedule. When taking a large family out shopping or to dinner, one might use cash to avoid that bother.
And we have all seen reports in recent years of unfair restaurant practices where restaurants hold back tips from credit card purchases; many diners like to pay with cash specifically to make sure the waiters and busboys really get their full tips.
We readers might look at it from one direction – surprised at the quantity of cash – but perhaps we should look at it from the other direction – what is it about our society that makes us distrustful of the use of our credit cards? Why do we fear that the waitress won’t get her tip, or that the waitress will be better off receiving cash for tax purposes?
There are societal issues here worth considering beyond this particular story.
The Masked Man:
Isn’t it interesting that the criminal was caught on camera but not caught in real life?
He was wearing a covid-style mask. He stole a purse in the wide open, in a public place, full of security cameras, and he can’t be identified because he could safely walk in and out of a busy establishment with a mask on, without anyone stopping him.
We think nothing of it today, but an American from just a decade ago would be bewildered by this outlandish change in our behavior.
Outside the hospital operating room, Western countries have associated masks with crime for centuries.
We identify each other by our faces; a headshot appears on our driver’s license and our passport, our school yearbook and our employer’s security card.
We have all these wonderful security measures in place, using modern technology – the photo IDs, the security cameras, the video playback that can be transferred to the police detectives’ computer system.
And it’s all rendered useless by a fifty-cent mask that a Chinese lab-created virus managed to make globally-ubiquitous just five years ago, turning our society upside down.
Why didn’t every eye in the place notice this guy walking through with a mask on?
Because we’ve consciously trained ourselves to disregard people in masks. On purpose! What a warped culture change this has been.
The Lessons:
There are members of the Left who are looking at this news story with glee. It’s another unforced error that they can highlight, contributing to their narrative that the Trump Administration makes embarrassing mistakes – as if the Biden-Harris collection of cross-dressing luggage thieves, carbon dioxide hoax crackpots, and foreign bribery cases weren’t ten times as embarrassing – or would have been if an honest press were covering them.
Every news story should be looked at objectively, though. We should look at this one, too, to see what lessons we can learn from it, and there are several.
It can’t hurt for women everywhere to remember the risk of pickpockets and purse-snatchers, and to prepare accordingly.
It can’t hurt for us all to start decrying the foolishness of tolerating mask-wearing in public.
And it can’t hurt for our political class – prosecutors, judges, and legislators alike – to be reminded that there is crime everywhere, and it’s the government’s job to catch these criminals, convict them, and lock them away.
Because if government is instituted for anything at all, it’s for the protection of law-abiding citizens from the criminal class.
It’s time to make criminals fear the consequences of being caught again.
Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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Some of our good friends on the left were blaming the Secretary for carrying so much cash, as if that’s any of their business, in tweets that reminded me of blaming rape victims for wearing too short a skirt.