Any month in which Chris Owens gets to issue a mission statement for a new political movement, or Charles Barron is given the opportunity to sound off about an unarmed black man hit by 50 bullets on the night before his wedding (while the shock of the underlying incident stuns Gatemouth into a failure to respond to his ill-chosen words), is bound to produce its share of unique rhetoric. Add to that the fact that most of November is devoted to post-election recrimination and spin, and the opportunities to pick low hanging fruit off the vine increase exponentially.
This is by no means a selection of the most ludicrous quotes in a month where the cup hath runneth over; it’s just a sampling of a few favorites, with some notes:
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"Carville speaks for yesterday's failed politics–the Clinton years." Editorial in “The Nation” 11/22/06
Comment: May I and all my loved ones be blessed with such failures all of our lives; I’d wish the same to you and yours, Katrina, but I hate being insincere
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“I think an Obama/Schumer ticket could be a winner, something like Kennedy/Johnson, except for the geographic balance.” Blogger Rwallnerny on Room 8, 11/28/06
Comment: Love ‘em both, but seems to me that a black guy from Chicago and a Jewish guy from Brooklyn is more a sitcom than a national ticket (no contest which one’s Oscar and which Felix). However, even as a sitcom, the demographics are probably a bit narrow. Remember, NBC chose to make the Larry David character on Seinfeld into an Italian (unless George Costanza was supposed to be Sephardic)
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“The Personal Lives of Politician….I considered writing a post on the subject (might get a few more hits) but thus far have chosen not to” –Blogger Larry Littlefield, 11/3/06 (Commenting on a piece discussing the rumors of Alan Hevesi’s personal affairs and related matters)
Comment: Sad to say Larry, writing about sex does not seem to have noticeably increased my readership. Perhaps you should try calling the piece "What I would do about Fucking"
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"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet." – Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings on being passed over for Chair of the House Committee on Intelligence
Comment: My initial preference for moderate Jane Harman against Hastings was not ideological. I like Hastings, who happens to be the Congressional Black Caucus’ foremost Pro-Israel voice. In the post-election atmosphere of a victorious campaign where ethical issues figured large, I preferred Harman for some of the same reasons I preferred Steny Hoyer to John Murtha (although in Murtha’s case, I had concerns beyond those of ethics). For similar reasons, I am hoping that in the upcoming runoff, New Orleans voters put William Jefferson in the deep freeze (where he can be close to the things he holds most dear).
The efforts of the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, to put their thumb on the scales for Harman was exceeded in its crassness only by a sub-rosa effort by CIA operatives (through a leak in a Robert Novak column) to express their support for the less abrasive Hastings. Perhaps each was the kiss of death for their candidate, although the CIA leak might actually have been a disguised effort to torpedo Hastings. Ironically, AIPAC’s efforts for Harman may have backfired. Discrediting Hastings may have been easy enough, given all the work he’s done to facilitate it, but nothing, including the findings of the 911 commission she has committed to enact into law (which favor an end to term limits for membership on the Congressional Intelligence Committees), is going to persuade Nancy Pelosi to forgive Jane Harman’s trespasses on matters of California politics. So, in the end, all AIPAC accomplished was to torpedo the guy who’d undoubtedly have been their second choice.
As to Hastings’ statement, I defer to the words of guest commentator John Conyers, the Senior African-American member of Congress, spoken in 1988, as he urged Hastings’ impeachment from a Federal Judgeship, “We did not wage that civil rights struggle merely to replace one form of judicial corruption for another,” Conyers said. “The principle of equality requires that a black public official be held to the same standard that other public officials are held to.…Just as race should never disqualify a person from office, race should never insulate a person from the consequences of wrongful conduct.”
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“There is no one in the world who can say to me that we should have known there was a vulnerability here…there was nothing to indicate that – absolutely nothing” – Queens Democratic Leader Joe Crowley concerning the failure of Queens Democrats to assist in a nearly successful challenge of Queens Republican State Senator Serphin Maltese.
Comment: Well, there may be a reason for that Joe; there was nothing to indicate Maltese’s vulnerability in his current district because your organization never bothered running anyone against him in this district or, for that matter, in his prior one. In fact, they tried to prevent it this year. Now, the failure to run such candidates is being used by you to justify the self-fulfilling prophecy of the party’s failure to win the seat.
In fact, if your party had devoted, say, a half hour to running the numbers concerning Democratic performance in the only two State Legislative seats the Republicans held in your borough, you might have found even more evidence of such vulnerability. I haven’t yet taken the time to get the ED by ED stats on by how much Kerry beat Bush by in this former heartland of Reagan Democrats and enrolled Conservatives (although I’ve emailed Jerry Skurnik and will update), but it’s not my job to know this; by contrast it is the job of your party, and I’ll bet your Executive Director never bothered to find out the answer either (at least not before this year’s election), as he was too busy with tasks like trying to help George Pataki further pack the Appellate Division so his courts could continue to facilitate the screwing of our City.
However, to save you guys some time, here are a couple of interesting stats: the district drawn for Maltese in 1992 had a non-Hispanic White population of 74%; the virtually unchanged district drawn in 2002 (despite efforts to draw in every stray non-liberal white who could be found) had less than 53%, and that’s dropped rapidly in the last four years and will continue to do so. Democrats outnumber Republicans here by a factor of 30%.
To paraphrase Jimi Hendrix (covering a Dino Valenti song written for “The Leaves”), “Hey Joe, where you going with your head up your ass?”
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And finally, this piece of Introspection:
“does it mean that I can’t run for Congress in the district in which I live, regardless of the content of my character, because I am not among the people who, in the words of the great Curtis Mayfield…are 'darker than blue'?" Gatemouth on 11/25/06
Comment: Gatey, given the contents of your character, I’m not sure you shouldn’t prefer being judged by the color of your skin.