So you think that the recent appearance by Stephen Colbert and his testimony to the house of representatives was embarrassing? I don't think you're really in a position to start a discussion on what is embarrassing in the house of representatives. But, if you want to go there...
What I find embarrassing is that with the largest majority we've had in quite some time, we're shelving tax cuts for the middle class weeks before election in which the majority of Americans aren't seeing much of an economic recovery. While millions suffer, and the electorate looks for some reason not to vote for the GOP who they know got us into this mess, you're deciding not to give them that reason. They don't like the democrats right now, but polls show that they don't like the republicans bind even larger margin. For many voters, this is going to be an election based on of the lesser of two evils, or the choice between bad and worse, and decisions like this matter. No, most won't realize that the tax cuts didn't get voted on or were even going to be brought up, but if they had because you did, they certainly would hear about that. It is downright embarrassing that even the motivation of getting more votes in a midterm election is not enough to do the right thing.
What I also find embarrassing is the political theater that goes on every day on the floor of the House and Senate. I'm not talking about Colbert's testimony the other day, but the absurd and utterly unconvincing arguments that are made from the floor of your building every single day it is in session. In 5 minutes, a comedian managed to point out that there is no bipartisanship, that most of you never read the bills you vote on, and still had time to manage to highlight the plight of migrant workers through satire that clearly you and many others were either too offended by or too slow to recognize the points that were being made. When the embarrassment that is our political system can at last be stirred to find something offensive or upsetting, and it isn't the number of people living in poverty, the number of people without Health Care, the number of people without day care, the number of people without jobs, or the number of tax cuts and breaks that the rich and businesses get while everyone else suffers for their profits, you make a clear example of what is truly embarrassing to the house of representatives.
It's the people who claim to work there.
When you've returned to work after the elections with a marginal majority, or worse yet, find yourself back in the minority, you'll have no one to blame but yourselves. It certainly won't be my fault, because I voted for you despite all of this because I know what the alternative means. It won't be many of our faults who do the same and vote for a party who refuses, by and large, to do the things they ran on while in possession of a serious majority margin. We turn out, and we vote. It'll be all of the inconsistent and unreliable voters who were energized against Bush in 2006 and for Obama in 2008 who fail to turn out because you've produced so little for them.
Before any of it starts, I'm generally not involved and utterly disinterested in the pro Obama vs. anti Obama arguments that take place here on a regular basis. I'm not getting to that, and I will thank you kindly for leaving it out of this diary. This diary is about the Majority Leader of our party opening his mouth on a stupid and pointless bit of media crack that all the beltway boys have been smoking the past few days. Taking time to talk about this while ignoring the tax cuts and other things that can be done right now is what's embarrassing.
So, Mr. Majority Leader, the next time Chris Wallace asks you if a comedian speaking to Congress was embarrassing, here is how you answer the question:
"What's embarrassing Chris, is the fact that you're asking me about this instead of the tax cuts for the middle class. Or the fact that you're asking me about this instead of the Republican party's recent filibuster of a defense bill. Or the fact that you're asking me about this instead of the completely empty Pledge that they just put out. What's embarrassing, Chris, is you and the rest of the media who would rather talk about made up stories and made up controversies than the actual issues of the day."
I won't even ask you to credit me for it.
Update: I see this made the recc list. Thanks!
Update 2: In the end, I really think that this comes down to our media sucking at their jobs. They have long since abandoned the responsibilities of true journalism - reporting the facts. What better example of this than the recent healthcare bill? When polled as individual issues, all of the aspects that are in the bill are quite popular even across party lines. But when asked what they think of the bill itself, they don't like it. Why? Because they don't know what's in the damn bill.
Now, the media would tell you that that is because the Democrats haven't 'sold the bill', but the reality is that we don't elect Congress people to sell anything. We elect them to make laws. The media's job is to report what is in the laws that they make. Instead, they report on the food fight and he said/she said over the laws as they are being proposed. This latest controversy is just one more example. Instead of reporting on what the hearings are about, or what is being said in them, they're all aflutter over the comedian's testimony. No one is discussing the actual issue that the hearings are supposed to be dealing with, or what is coming out of those hearings other than the fact that a comedian did his thing and lots of Very Serious People think he was bad for doing so.
Seriously. This is what our media has become. Until this is fixed, I really don't think that much is going to change in the world of politics. The American people aren't hearing the facts, and many don't have time to look them up themselves. As a result, they either don't vote or they vote based on incorrect data.
I firmly believe that CNN and the creation of 24 hour news was the worst thing to happen to this country in the last few decades.