Dancing the Tango with The Hammer

Full Disclosure: I didn’t like Tom DeLay when he was in politics, I don’t like him now, and I probably will never like the man. Sorry!

If I think of some other proviso, disclaimer, etc., I’ll let you know.

Although I am not much into watching studio dancing or dancing contests, there is one dance that I love to watch when it is done properly: the immortal Tango.

My wife, on the other hand, loves dancing shows, especially ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and she will alert me when the Tango is about to be performed. Yes, when danced properly, the Tango is a performance.

Sometimes she is able to coax me to watch other parts of Dancing with the Stars with her.

However, she did not have to coax me to watch the first two “episodes” of Dancing with the Stars this week. You guessed it; because Tom DeLay was “performing.”

Watching the Hammer perform brought out all kinds of emotions—mostly wicked ones—especially when, in my unenlightened opinion of dancing, he murdered the cha-cha during his first performance.

Because of all the emotions, caveats, conflicts of interest etc, I was not going to critique Tom DeLay’s dancing. Fortunately a very objective, unbiased source has just done that for us.

In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times none other than Maureen Dowd, writes about “the Wild Thing.”

You can read the entire piece here. I will just quote some very objective excerpts.

Maureen Dowd starts by describing an injury the Hammer had suffered during rehearsals:

On Monday, his debut as a dancing fool (or just a fool, depending on whom you talk to), he had started at 10 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m., and his pre-stress fracture was acting up.” Which meant “a delay in learning the tango from Cheryl Burke, his partner on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” who blessedly had never heard of the guy once dubbed ‘The Meanest Man in Congress’ when he was first assigned to her.

And something about the Hammer’s “feminine side”:

The Hammer, who in rehearsal admitted to feeling like “a complete goose” — and not simply because he had his golf shirt tucked into his sweat pants — is clinging to his Texas machismo even as he follows Cheryl’s instruction to find his “feminine side.”

“I’m being more feminine and a little prissy,” he said, using a word that smacks of über-alpha “I am not gay even though I have on heels and sparkles and want a disco-ball trophy” overcompensation.

About his debut on dancing with the Stars:

So DeLay, 62, cutting loose in his orthopedic shoes with the cha-cha and his Texas mugshot grin, was the Lipitor version of the finale of “Footloose.” The judges gave him tepid scores in Monday’s male dance-off, but a scandal-plagued former Dallas Cowboy and George Hamilton’s glossy son rated lower.

Even though the Hammer winked and pointed at Bruno Tonioli, “the effervescently effeminate judge,” Bruno shouted, “You’re crazier than Sarah Palin!” when, according to Dowd, a winded DeLay was done swiveling in a leopard-skin-sequin-trimmed brown get-up.

“I think that’s a great compliment,” DeLay told Dowd afterward.

Finally, about whipping the vote and fixing winning the contest:

Once the Hammer tried to outfox Democrats. Now he’s trying to outfox-trot Donny Osmond. Once he whipped Republicans relentlessly to keep their votes in line. Now he says he and his daughter have “a strategy to whip the vote” on “Dancing.”

“Nothing complicated,” he said. “Twitter. Facebook. My daughter taught me how to tweet.”

I just hope that “The former exterminator [who] drove the loony Clinton impeachment, pushed the nutty Terri Schiavo legislation, gutted the House ethics committee, engaged in gerrymandering schemes, enhanced the pay-to-play political culture and made the Republican Party so sulfurously partisan, ethically suspect and God-centric that voters recoiled” will be voted out before he is called upon to dance the Tango.

I came across this description of the Tango:

The Tango has developed into a rich language that allows people to share a special connection and communication. More than a dance of control and surrender, of fancy suits and stilettos, the tango embodies all of life’s richness. It is a celebration of the human spirit.

In that context, I just don’t think that such a beautiful, sensual, noble, almost sacred dance would survive a desecration by the Hammer.

Image: Courtesy discoveruruguay.com