A good reason for all but the richest to weep

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel… – James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Speaker of the House John Boehner looks and talks like one of those Hollywood actors, circa 1960 – Tony Randall, Gig Young, et al. – who spend all their time drinking martinis and trying to get it on with Doris Day. They nurse hangovers and never work. Their saving grace is lightness – i.e., good-humored acceptance of their limitations and an aversion to pretending they’re serious about anything.

The difference is that the chronically weeping Boehner – nicknamed “Boner” by George W. Bush – wants America to take him seriously, despite abundant evidence he’s a shill for special interests and a bag man for the GOP. I can’t imagine Tony Randall trying to hook up by quoting from the Declaration of Independence (which Boner mistook for the Constitution). Or Gig Young blubbering about how hard he’s worked to become what Matt Taibbi called the “the ultimate Beltway hack.”

Read Taibbi’s well-researched piece from Rolling Stone and ask yourself where the Washington press corps was when this bleary-eyed bozo was setting new records for congressional sleaziness.