This week's poll from the Lester & Charlie Institute of Forward Thinking:
Last week, we thought the dictionary was going to get a new picture for its entry on irony when Dick Cheney announced that he's writing a book about having a heart. ut, with our never-miss-a-beat Congress back in session, even Dick's heart doesn't stand a chance when it comes pulling the trump card out of the irony deck.
How did Congress top Dick?
Well, after two years of proving itself insane, Congress decided, in a near-unanimous vote, that it's totally uncool to ever use the word "lunatic" in any federal legislation. "The continued use of this pejorative term has no place in the U.S. code," said one of the bill's sponsors, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
The sole dissenter was Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert. Yes, that one. The same man who tried to convince Anderson Cooper that Muslim mommies are sneaking over to the U.S. to have babies they then bring back to the Middle East to be trained as terrorists, who wondered, after the Colorado theater shootings, why more moviegoers weren't packing heat, and who joined up with uber-lunatic Michele Bachmann to speculate that the entire U.S. government was being overtaken by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Maybe we've misunderstood the definition of irony, but isn't it strange that Gohmert, perhaps the nuttiest representative any state has ever had, is the only Congressperson who thinks we have an urgent need to hold on to the word lunatic? Why? Is that the name already stitched onto his Christmas stocking?
And we were double-surprised to discover that Gohmert's objection is that Congress should be addressing more important things. Whoa. This must be the ancient Mayans' idea of a practical joke, getting us to agree with someone like Rep. Gohmert right before the world ends!
While we understand why the 112th Congress, in its final days, would be a bit sensitive to leaving a legacy that has any mention of the word lunacy or its derivatives, we agree that they could be tackling some bigger issues. But, seeing as that's not likely to happen (this is Congress we're talking about), we're wondering what other pressing issues they will tackle next! What do you think?
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