John Boehner, the Speaker of the House come January, is a crier. So what? He’s an emotional dude. We just haven’t seen House Speakers who cry at the drop of a chat with a bunch of school children.
A few Americans unaware of his personal traits that helped him crawl from rags to riches saw for the first time his crying jag on election night Nov. 2.
On Sunday night he bawled like a baby at the most innocent questions on “60 Minutes” posed by CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl before an audience which usually hits 10 million viewers.
And on Monday morning, the ladies from ABC’s “The View” mocked Boehner except, of course, the token conservative regular on the show, Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
My sensibilities of Boehner, the leader of the second most powerful political chamber in the nation, duplicates that of Tom Hanks, the manager of a women’s baseball team in the movie “A League of Their Own.”
“There’s no crying in baseball,” Hanks scolded a crying right fielder for missing her cut off throw.
Of course, if one saw current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cry, that would be a gossip item to end all.
I also find it rather amusing that some of the muddle-headed, vicious women running for election this past autumn told their male challengers to “man up.”
Will those losers and forgetters of good manners ask the same of John Boehner, the poor little boy from Ohio who worked every crappy job he could find to wind his way through college in seven years?
I personally almost never agree with Boehner’s politics. That doesn’t mean I have to attack him for crying until the melodrama becomes absurd and his tears are a manipulative way to win over votes on House issues he supports.
I suppose Boehner will have to endure the mockery from every critic and comedian for the next months or longer. In time, we will get used to it and take up bets in office pools what coming event will trigger a good old cry from our august House Speaker.
Here’s the Huffington Post account:
Barbara Walters was the first to lay into Boehner. “This guy has an emotional problem,” she said. “Every time he talks about anything that’s not ‘raise taxes,’ he cries.” That sent the audience into gales of laughter. Walters continued, “If you had seen Nancy Pelosi all these past years crying, what would you say? [You’d say] she’s got a problem.”
Joy Behar said she called Boehner the “Weeper of The House,” and that, in her view, he only cried when he was talking about his life, but had “very little empathy for people who are in that position now.”
Hasselbeck objected to this.
“Let’s not crucify a man for getting emotional,” she said. “He’s probably a fine man who cares and if he wants to give small businesses tax breaks so they can hire somebody so they can have a job…you can’t just brush him like that and say that he’s a bad guy.”
(Photos Courtesy of BuzzFeed)
Cross posted on The Remmers Report
Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at [email protected] . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the neCwspaper business.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.