Why Are Senators the Only People in America Who Take Senators Seriously?

Posted by Thers, Firedoglake at 4:00 AM on January 2, 2009.

Here's a fun little political pickle!

Senators take the Senate very very seriously and are very very impressed with their status as Senators. It is of course understandable that they do so, in that being a Senator is, obviously, a big deal. But it is also rather bizarre, in that pretty much the entire country thinks Senators are a bunch of clowns. The country, of course thinks this because Senators keep acting like clowns. And why do Senators keep acting like clowns? Well, lots of reasons, but one of the main ones is that Senators take themselves so goddamn seriously that they are apparently immune from recognizing themselves as a bunch of goddamn clowns. It's a pickle!

The perfect expression of this was the standing ovation for Ted Stevens, which made perfect sense from the perspective of Senatorial Dignity, but from any other perspective was completely embarrassing. And then there was the Democratic caucus's refusal to do anything at all about the fact that their colleague Joe Lieberman had, essentially, publicly and repeatedly mooned them -- and that they apparently saw this refusal as some sort of a "principled" poke-in-the-eye for Liberal Bloggers. Which was weird, because Liberal Bloggers were not the ones who'd been mooned. Talk about your convoluted concepts of personal dignity.

I've been mulling this pickle over today in regards to Blagojevich's decision to appoint Burris. The legalities of the affair aside, I'm more than confident that Harry Reid's decision to block the appointment is going to ultimately blow up in his face and make him and his caucus look stupid. This is not to say that Ian is wrong to argue that Reid ought to be blocking the appointment. Rather, it's to say that given his MO, the most likely reason Reid is taking this line is out of his concern with the Dignity and Traditions of the Senate, which (apart from courting the good opinion of Village Insiders) seems to be all he's actually willing to fight for (as Jane said this morning). And every time he's done this in the past, he's ended up looking even more like a clown. Why should we expect a different ending this time around? We've seen this circus before.

Blagojevich is more than willing to act like an asshole; so, it would appear, is Burris. And the GOP has long been willing to act like a pack of assholes. And that history teaches us that when an asshole gets into a fight with a clown, bet on the asshole.

Tagged as: senate, reid, blagojevich, burris

Thers runs Whiskey Fire.