Congress’ Inability to Govern Is Illustrated by Stephen Colbert’s Invited House of Representatives Appearance regarding Migrant Farm Workers

© 2010 Peter Free

 

29 September 2010

 

Ruth Markus summed it up ─ we are knifing ourselves to death

 

I was surprised when I saw Stephen Colbert testifying before a Congressional House of Representatives sub-committee regarding migrant labor issues.  That was a new low for even this badly performing institution.

 

No disrespect to Mr. Colbert intended.

 

But why did California Democrat Zoe Lofgren invite so glaring a non-expert to testify on difficult issues that are painfully real to (a) thousands of human beings and (b) the United States economy?

 

The Democrats’ ploy, apparently approved before or afterward by Democratic leadership, seemed a slap in suffering’s face.

 

Ruth Marcus, of the Washington Post, summed the incident up.  Snippets of what she wrote include:

 

Stephen Colbert is no Elmo -- which is why it was crazy for House Democrats to have him testify before a subcommittee last week about migrant labor.

 

Colbert's testimony was not history repeating itself as farce -- it was history starting as farce.

 

Granted, this isn't the most embarrassing spectacle to unfold before Congress. . . . Nor is it the biggest story around. But it is emblematic of the dumbing down of American political culture -- more circuses, less bread.

 

 

© 2010 Ruth Marcus, Stephen Colbert becomes another circus of Congress’s making, Washington Post A21 (29 September 2010)

 

Stupidity triumphs, when we lose the ability to recognize and defend institutional dignity

 

I was born when America was not a carnival predominantly led by airheads.

 

World War II had just ended.  At least 60 million people had lost their lives in a long conflagration of inconceivable inhumanity, countervailing courage, and the widespread destruction of virtually all the physical means that support living.

 

The transition from that era ─ and the institutional dignity that represented it ─ to this vacuously avoidant one demonstrates our propensity for self-indulgent forgetfulness.

 

We have a wising-up counterpoint ─ if only we would look at it

 

Counterpoint to our domestic idiocy is our troops’ old-fashioned commitment to honorable duty and courageous service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Many of them never make it home.

 

Many more come back missing critical pieces of themselves.

 

What are the rest of us thinking?

 

Our nonsense is going to catch us

 

Rome was not an admirable place as it began its slide out the backside of History.

 

We appear not to be either.