CSotD: Empty suits in an empty room
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Mike Marland comments on the poor, delicate flowers in our Granite State legislature.
I wouldn't headline a regional piece like this, except that the New Hampshire state legislature often becomes national news in the form of "Can you believe these nuts?"
It's rare for any of the fringey, nonsensical bills that come up in the legislature to become law, though Maggie Hassan had to drop the veto on a few when she was governor.
She's gone off to the US Senate, but our legislature still proposes laws that make people say, "Are they out of their minds?"
Comedy Central has apparently deleted the 2012 video in which Ilya Gerner described the New Hampshire legislature, but the essential quote lives on:
Take New Hampshire, which in some populist conceit has decided that every dozen residents need their own severely under-resourced and under-paid state legislator, who will somehow remain “close to the people.” Of course, the natural conclusion of “citizen legislatures” isn’t home-spun wisdom and incorruptibility, insomuch as a bunch of part-time real-estate agents throwing monkey feces at a wall and calling the result a “House Bill.”
To which Mother Jones, in an article that gravely insults three state legislatures by ranking ours fourth-worst, adds "But that's not entirely fair … some of them are lawyers too."
Gerner nailed the problem: We have the lowest citizen-to-representative ratio in the country. As of 2010, we had one state rep for every 3,291 citizens, when the national average is one rep for every 59,626 citizens.
The numbers may have shifted in recent years, but the rationality has not increased, and we pay a whopping $200 stipend for the two-year stint so it's not even a place to get rich.
But with so many seats available, if you can get a group of like-minded screwballs to vote for you, you can go to Concord and throw monkey feces at a wall.
The latest imbroglio, that which Marland is commenting on, is this: Republican Legislator Robert Fisher was outed as the creator of a deeply misognystic Reddit group, the strongest defense for which was that he founded the icky, nasty thing before he was elected.
And when that defense didn't seem to swing much weight, the Republicans dragged forth Martha Frost, a Democratic representative noted for her lively, confrontational, often salty tweets.
Because, as Marland notes, the GOP's delicate, patriotic sensibilities were offended. One legislator even said "he sought a seat change because Frost’s comments made him feel unsafe."
Yes, folks, a stern and rockbound Yankee had to find a safe space because of a woman who said being condescended to by men made her feel "homicidal."
Or it could have been the boobs. Our Republicans feel particularly threatened by boobs and people who have them.
The Union-Leader explained the issue succinctly: "Fisher is a jerk and Frost is a loon."
Which is true but leave us not assume they are thus unique among our legislators.
Anyone who does not live in New Hampshire will get a good laugh out of this news story.
For those of us who live here, well, "live free or die of embarrassment."
Or, as Alexander Bullock (Eugene Pallette) observed in My Man Godfrey, "All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."
Juxtaposition of the Day
Speaking of lunatics, my dog seems determined to prove that breed tendencies are only tendencies, not laws.
I've had ridgebacks since 1986, plus a few step-ridgebacks and ridgebacks-in-law and now a grand-ridgeback, and one of the most attractive things about them is that they almost never bark.
Vaska's breeder, however, commented that "this is the most vocal ridgeback I have ever known" and he was only 10 weeks old at the time.
This dog barks more in a week than any of my other ridgebacks barked in their lives and if that's not true it's awfully close.
So, while both these strips cracked me up, I was particularly amused that Hilary Price seems to have drawn a terrier and I'm going to guess a cairn.
If you go to her November open-studio and purchase a copy of Reigning Cats and Dogs, she will ask you what sort of dog you own and do a credible doodle of the breed as she's signing the book, so she knows her dogs.
And down at the corner of our block is a cairn who makes me feel good, because, while Vaska may well be the most vocal ridgeback ever, he'd have to step up his game to match this barking machine. The dog barks incessantly at everything.
Oddly enough, Vaska finds it neither threatening or infuriating or even terribly interesting.
When we walk past, if the dog is out, he'll race up and down the iron fence delivering what seem like death threats, but it's become clear that Vaska recognizes it simply as an expression of excitement, not of hostility, and, since he doesn't share the excitement, he pretty much ignores it.
These frantic histrionics make Vaska's outbursts seem rare and harmless, so that's good.
But if I had to live with him, I'd have tried giving him doggie downers, and, perhaps, as Price suggests, try them myself.
Meanwhile, at least Vaska has never lived anywhere with a doorbell and can readily distinguish a knock on the real door from one on television.
When I was a kid, our cocker flew into action at doorbells on TV, which we thought was funny because she wasn't terribly dedicated about it.
She'd simply jump up, bark, trot to the door and then come back satisfied. If she'd been more intense, we'd have likely been less amused.
A related problem, however, is with my dog's owner, who leaps for his phone whenever one rings on TV.
Fortunately, I'm more cocker spaniel than cairn and do not actually try to answer it.
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