The current Congressional* tempest in a chamberpot is beneath notice and I wasn't going to notice it, until a certain U. S. Representative from South Carolina started showing up on every blamed screen, along with occasional appearances from the current and likely future Speaker of the House. And every time, they had the smug little smiles of grade-school children who have found a context in which they can say a naughty word and get away with it.
That bothers me. Okay, the House is the "Junior Chamber," but I never thought it was that junior. I have suggested in the past that we put up Congressthings in same accommodations as the military slaps together for unmarried junior officers, to spare the poor dears the worry of keeping up with the Washington social scene (and maybe teach 'em a little humility, like that's possible). Now I'm realizing they're going to need supervised bathroom breaks while in session, with the Sergeant-at-Arms sorting them out into groups who won't get into fights with one another.
Or not. See, there's a new Representative from Delaware, who looks enough like her peer from the Palmetto State that I can't consistently tell them apart: low-maintenance straight brown hair, squarish reading glasses, well-practiced smile, understated politician skirt-and-jacket outfits with flag pins in the lapels. But the Delawarian has a biography with details in common with musician Wendy Carlos, and their overlap isn't playing a keyboard synthesizer.
The incoming House has a lot to deal with; after the 2024 election, there were 219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with three seats still counting. Now three Republicans have stepped down and until their seats are filled and the remaining counts finished, it's 216 - 213. The GOP will be in the minority if four members get stuck in a card game -- or traffic. There's a lot of unfinished business and plenty of new business -- and instead, they're fussing about which washrooms Delaware's sole Representative will be allowed to use.
That Representative hasn't joined in the fray. She knows something that any tourist could figure out: the U. S. Capitol building is riddled with single-occupancy washrooms, the result of efforts to make the very old and much-remodeled building ADA-compliant with the least amount of bother. They put them in the areas the public can tour, and they put them in the parts that are normally limited to Congresscreatures, staff and people on official business. No one is going to perish for lack of access to a washroom -- nor are they going to fade away if they don't get maximal face time on the various news networks and websites, despite what some of the incumbents appear to believe.
House districts are entitled to the Representative they elect. The rest of us don't get a veto and, barring truly egregious miscounduct, that's that. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's New York district picked her; Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia district selected her. Delaware has sent Sarah McBride. In 1870, South Carolina sent Joseph Hayne Rainey to the House, and somehow, the planet did not lurch to a stop in its tracks. I've searched, but I can't find any mention of which washroom they made him use, or if the Representative from Delaware at that time objected and staged a series of indignant, preening news conferences about it.
I'd suggest that some House members ought to try growing up, but I suppose I should just accept that their districts chose to send politicians in need of maturing. I sure hope their time in the junior chamber helps.
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* Originally typoed as "Congrossional," which is about right.
Reading the Wikipedia bio of Congressman Rainey--we don't seem to gave gotten to this low point.
ReplyDelete"In the closing hours of Congress in 1878, Rainey was one of the few sober members present. He acted to ensure the passage of an $18 million civil service appropriation bill that would not have been passed without his firm presence."
Jeffrey Smith