If a picture is worth a thousand words, what can be said in as many about the perplexing and unexpectedly redolent image below? Snapped on January 6, 2021 by Reuters photographer Mike Theiler as rioters invaded the Capitol, it shows a bizarrely fur-clad one among them—later identified as Aaron Mostofsky of Brooklyn, New York—taking a breather from all the breaking and entering going on in the citadel of democracy. (Mostofsky has since been arrested by the FBI on four criminal counts, including felony theft of government property.)
He is in interesting company. Seated outside the Senate Chamber, the insurgent (wearing a bullet-proof vest underneath his animal pelts) pauses beneath the official portrait of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by Walter Ingalls.
