If you were unfortunate enough to be watching “Good Morning America” yesterday, you probably know that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is going to be a contestant on this fall’s season of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.“
I don’t even know where to begin with this.
Tom DeLay developed—no, earned—a reputation as a ruthless individual when he served in Washington. There is a reason the guy’s nickname was The Hammer.
Now, if you’re a child of the 1980s (as I am), the notion of someone nicknamed The Hammer dancing brings to mind only one thing.
To paraphrase one of my Twitter friends, @toddcstacy, this morning: Please, Hammer. Don’t hurt ‘em.
Except in this case, we mean us.
Seriously. Just when you think you have gotten your brain around the idea of Tom DeLay dancing the rumba (arrrgh), you read this article and are even more disturbed.
DeLay’s daughter explains that her father may just surprise some folks on the dance floor.
After all, he does have some experience:
“People are going to see the real Tom DeLay,“ (DeLay’s daughter Dani) Ferro told FOXNews.com, noting that her father once took disco lessons and has “good rhythm.“
DISCO LESSONS??? I don’t even want to know!!
Oh my goodness. Tom DeLay in satin and sequins and massive amounts of makeup. Tom DeLay with a spray tan.
SIDEBAR: There will be a 30-second delay as I desperately try to recall whether there is any Pepto in the medicine cabinet.
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END SIDEBAR
After scanning the rest of the contestant list, I just didn’t see anything that interested me—unless it’s the thought of Michael Irvin in satin and sequins and massive amounts of makeup. Now that might be funny. And the feature with Kenny Mayne, “DanceCenter,“ is always a good time.
But really. Donny Osmond? Didn’t he get a half-contestant credit for all the face time he got when his sister Marie was on a while back?
Between Donny Osmond and the insufferable Samantha Harris, this might be the first season of “Dancing” that I actively avoid.
Back to Delay: If you appreciate a good laugh like I do, don’t miss the DeLay-related guffaw awaiting you over on Rich Galen’s Secret Decoder Ring.
I concluded my “mob column,“ as it is coming to be known, this weekend with these lines:
Congress has kept right on being Congress, and average Americans are fed up. If constituents have given up on disagreeing agreeably, it is in no small part because their Congress has given up on listening.
So forgive folks if they’re feeling a bit mob-ish. Their means, while regrettable, are accomplishing their long-pursued ends: They finally have their lawmakers’ attention.
I love the First Amendment. Don’t you?
When I said Congress had given up on listening, I meant it more as a figure of speech than a literal report. But it appears that both are accurate.
Have a look at this YouTube video made at a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). Of course, this video is being used as a tool by opponents of the health care reform package now working its way through Congress. But I just want you to look at how the honorable Congresswoman Lee treats her constituent (who, I want you to notice, is NOT YELLING).
You can see how much Ms. Lee cares about what this woman, whom she is supposed to represent, is saying.
Disgusting. Absolutely unconscionable, indefensible and disgusting.
David Jennings over at LoneStarTimes.com has more on the meeting. Get this: The meeting started a half-hour late, presumably because Lee wasn’t there. And then:
(The incident captured above) wasn’t the only time she wasn’t paying attention to her constituent. Several times, while people were asking questions, she walked to the front and engaged her staff in conversation. She said that in Washington, they learn to multi-task and that is what she was doing, insisting that she wasn’t being rude and that she was indeed listening.
Several times. Multi-tasking. That was her explanation for her rude behavior.
I guess Ms. Lee is an expert at multi-tasking when it suits her fancy. For example, she supposedly can do it effectively when she is in a town hall meeting.
... Apparently just not well enough to get to that meeting on time.
I told you in my column a few weeks ago that the hands-off approach President Obama has taken with the details of the health care reform project so far has opened the door for different caucuses wield significantly more influence over the legislation than they otherwise could.
Continuing the theme of stuff-I-meant-to-tell-you-about-earlier-but-didn’t, The New York Times had this fantastic story about another group to add to the list:
Freshman House Democrats.
As the Times notes:
As the House prepared to leave town until after Labor Day, the health bill was taking on some of the ideological hue of House freshmen, many of whom represent districts in Southern and Western states that were previously out of reach of Democrats, far from the urban centers that have long been the party’s base.
But the changes in the health care legislation have already provoked a backlash from the party’s progressive wing, setting up an August struggle not only with Republicans but also among Democrats for the overall direction of the health plan.
That “ideological hue?“ The postponement of a floor vote, concessions on cost and regional disparities and consideration of a higher threshold for any surtaxes that could hit small businesses, according to the Times.
Note this quote from one freshman Democrat involved in these efforts:
“As long as I feel comfortable that I had the opportunity to address issues that I have raised, I am willing to take the tough vote,” said Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., Democrat of Maryland. “What I am not willing to do is follow the lead simply to follow the lead.”
In other words, President Obama and Democratic leaders, slow down. Talk to us. Listen to us. Let’s not rush this thing. Let’s get it right.
Sounds a lot like what moderates and conservatives have been saying, doesn’t it?
If you live in the print delivery area of the Opelika-Auburn News, you may have already seen this morning that Judy Sheppard has a piece responding to my column last Saturday (“Forgive the mobs, they’re just fed up”).
If you don’t live in the area, her column, “Be careful what you consider to be a ‘mob,‘“ is available online, and you can read it here.
Mrs. Sheppard is a journalism professor at Auburn University. What makes this even more interesting for me is that she was one of my journalism professors when I studied at Auburn University. I took her feature writing class (and yes, I got an A).
As I told her in my e-mail to her this morning, it was hard not to think that I had arrived when I saw that one of my former professors was responding to something I had done professionally. It is very exciting!
I used the rest of my e-mail to point out and comment on some things in her piece. The text of that e-mail follows below.
I enjoyed your piece and actually agree with you about REAL mobs. You make legitimate points about the danger of taking freedom of speech to the point where “their noise, numbers and intimidation … silence (the) speech” of others.
But the point of my column, and I think I made it clearly, is that these groups assembling to protest what’s going on with health care reform aren’t real mobs. I even used quotations around “mobs” on first reference, and in the concluding paragraphs, I used it as an adjective (mob-ish), not a noun (I don’t know where you found the “affection” in that characterization, though; I don’t agree with how they are handling it, and I called their tactics regrettable).
Folks are upset that their concerns about this process were being ignored. Sure, some people are taking it too far – as some people opponents of President Bush did during his administrations. (I don’t know if you saw a piece I did on a protester who disrupted a citizenship ceremony, but I was highly critical of that when it happened.) I hope you don’t really believe that town hall protesters, who are concerned about their ability to maintain control of their health care decisions and do not want to the already-exploding national debt, bear any resemblance to segregationist mobs of the 1950s and 1960s. There are several critical differences, not the least of which is that the segregationist mobs were the majority and had lawmakers who shared their views, while these town hall protesters are objecting to the efforts of the congressional majority and the president. These folks at the town halls are the voice of dissent now, just as integration advocates were then.
But I was especially moved by this line in your piece: “In fact, the Founding Fathers knew majorities can sometimes become bullies, so they wrote the Bill of Rights to restrict the many from taking away the rights of the few — like the right of one citizen, brave enough to stand up alone, to speak without being threatened.”
Guess who’s feeling threatened these days? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have called the fervent objections of Obama’s plan’s opponents “un-American,” and the White House wants its supporters to report opponents’ objections. Anyone who doesn’t get on board with the current plan (a group that includes Artur Davis, by the way) are being painted as anti-reformers, somehow lovers of the current system.
I see a lot of this from a different perspective because I did work for a lawmaker, and I have seen what goes on in the legislative process, and it is cause for real anger. I am no apologist for bad behavior, as one commenter on my piece said. I actually pride myself on having cultivated a measured voice on political issues, because they are so rare these days, as you noted. Far from excusing or supporting the disruptions that are going on in town hall meetings, I am just trying to explain why it’s happening.
I do understand the power of words; I had great instructors, including you, who taught it to me. I wish the folks at the DNC, which, as I said, added to the problem when it first used the word “mobs,” had been as fortunate. Their use of that word upped the ante, and it was as inaccurate as it was unnecessary.
It is possible to understand why anger exists without agreeing with or condoning the tactics that the angry people are employing. I try my best to be one of those quiet, educated, informed voices, I was trying to help my readers understand that anger.
Sarah Palin’s ex-son-in-law-to-be (how’s that for a sideswipe with fame?) is such a disgusting, conscious-less individual, it makes me physically angry to think that anyone pays him any attention at all.
Can you imagine the horror his now-infant son will someday feel as he learns of how his father aired his family’s dirty laundry, even to the point of his sexual history with his mother, in the name of money and fame?
But last night, in his latest desperate attempt to snatch some fleeting moments of fame from the underbelly of the discarded-remnants gutter, Johnston showed up with self-described D-lister Kathy Griffin—who is disgusting in her own right—at the Teen Choice Awards.
... as her date.
Eww.
I don’t know for whom this is more embarrassing: Johnston, who clearly thinks of himself as some sort of manly “stud,“ or the washed-up Griffin, who was toting around a dude young enough to be her son. I know they say that the only bad publicity is no publicity, but I’m pretty sure those rules don’t apply when you have a child—which Johnston, obviously, does.
And then I realized it: Johnston and Griffin are both obnoxious blemishes on the complexion of humanity.
Even more than being perfect for each other, they deserve each other.
I wish them long lives of happiness ... in complete obscurity.
