So, how was your spring break? Oh, mine was good.
Thanks for asking.
I’ll tell you what, though, I didn’t open a newspaper the entire time. Nor did I turn on a television news broadcast. And though I may have had talk radio on for a little bit, I soon plugged my iPod into its car adapter in order to drown out the current events commentary of Mr. Bill O’Reilly with the timeless song stylings of Mr. Billy Joel.
I didn’t start out with the intention of being disconnected from the world. However, I spent the first couple days of spring break in a cabin in the woods. The news was not readily available. After that, my news fast had momentum. I read a lot (mostly histories and biographies), but I just didn’t get around to reading about current events.
But now that school has started and my column is due, I’m back into the swing of things again. And you know what? I can’t say that I missed a whole lot in the week that I was out. There were a couple of big stories and a lot of small ones – just like every week.
The things that were bad when I left aren’t much better now. The things that were good when I left aren’t much worse now. From my view here in hindsight, it seems that the two biggest stories were the immigration debates in Congress with its attendant protests and Rep. Cynthia McKinney striking a Capitol Police officer.
The immigration issue is a serious debate with myriad intriguing points of view and a whole host of interested parties. Perhaps I’ll use this space to get into that in a later column.
The whole Rep. McKinney thing is hilarious. If I’d known about this earlier, I would’ve tuned in to Letterman.
Members of Congress are supposed to wear lapel pins that identify them as such. When they’re wearing these pins, lawmakers don’t have to go through the same security procedures as we mortals when entering the Capitol building. Apparently, Rep. McKinney tried to bypass the security checkpoint without her pin. She breezed past the guard without so much as an, “Excuse me, I’m a member of Georgia’s Congressional delegation. I don’t have my pin, I’ll just be on my way.”
The officer, whose job it is to keep unidentified persons from walking into the Capitol without running them through a metal detector, asked the Congresswoman to stop. When she ignored him, he caught up to her and put his hand on her to get her to stop. It was then, that she struck the officer.
Now there’s talk that she may be charged for striking the officer. Rep. McKinney says it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t wearing her pin. McKinney believes the Capitol Police should be able to recognize all 535 members of Congress by sight. My question is this: Even granting that premise, how is he supposed to recognize you if you don’t even slow down or acknowledge his presence as you zoom right by him? Nobody likes security procedures – they’re intrusive and tedious. But the people whose job it is to implement security procedures are just that: people trying to do a job. Rep. McKinney’s attitude seems to be arrogantly insensitive to this. Members of Congress may be used to totally ignoring security personnel and never having to explain themselves to anyone. Most of the rest of us realize that if we just cooperate, the whole process goes much more smoothly and quickly.
Rep. McKinney says she was “assaulted” because she is a black woman. I don’t know whether the officer who stopped her is a racist. However, I’m a white man, and I can guarantee you I’d get more than a hand on my shoulder if I totally ignored the repeated orders to halt from a peace officer. But then again, I’m not arrogant enough to do that. OK, so I am arrogant enough; but I’m definitely not foolish enough.
So here I am, safely past security and once again ensconced behind my keyboard. From here, I once again have access to the news. It was a nice vacation. But like most vacations, I was glad when it ended. It’s good to be back.

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