While there have been many candidates for Arrogant Jerk over the last several month, I have laid low in hopes of letting the political wind settle a little before I start offending people again. It’s more fun to call out the Arrogant Jerks when tempers are not so hot, and the slightest critisism of someone’s favorite politician isn’t taken as a personal attack.
Nevertheless, Senator Barbara Boxer has slapped me awake with a move so Arrogant my head is still spinning. Here’s the story, as if you didn’t already know…
During public hearings on the restoration progress of our government effort to rebuild the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina, Brigadier General Michael Walsh, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, had the gall, the audacity, the sheer imprudence to address our good senator as ‘ma’am’.
Barbara Boxer apparently considered this time-honored term of respect as something beneath her, and quickly interrupted the Brigadier General, saying (and I quote) “I’d a,.. You know; Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am’? It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. So I’d appreciate it, yes, thank you.”
Her display of absolute Arrogance was amplified by the fact that she literally interrupted Mr. Walsh (I’m sure he won’t mind) mid-sentence as he attempted to answer her previous question. His reply after her Arrogant burst was simply ‘Yes Senator’. Having been chided by such Arrogance in front of he committee, and the entire country, I am sure the Brigadier General felt an avalanche of emotions yet remained calm and respectful. Such is the way of our highly trained and respectful armed services.
Apparently during all that hard work that Senator Boxer was enduring as she clawed her way to top public official, she forgot that she is an elected representative of the people, and left humility and respect back there on the campaign trail. Never once, I am sure, did she consider that the Brigadier General might too have worked and sacrificed to earn his position. It is a shame, and perhaps telling, that Senator Boxer felt the need to so Arrogantly remind us of her title; people who have to remind others of their ‘title’ are often the ones not deserving of it.
Boxer (I don’t care what her title is) reminds us, too, that we have allowed our senate to be overrun with multi-term power mongers who care less for the people they are serving and more for their political future as elite power players. She isn’t concerned about what is going on in Louisianan, nor does she care about how long things are taking. She just wants to display her might as someone in charge.
Unfortunately for her, this little outburst has exposed her as the one who thinks she is in charge, and thus probably the reason things aren’t getting done in the first place. I learned an important lesson while working for Microsoft; when something goes wrong, you don’t blame the vendors or the people in the trenches, you blame management.
Being in charge is fun, but it comes at the price of responsibility. You can belittle as many people as you want to, Senator, but in the end it only serves to show you are little more than an Arrogant Jerk.
Check it out…
Tags: Senator Barbara Boxer
For two years, I worked for Walsh having been a civilian in the Corps of Engineers. In wikipedia, Walsh’s picture is next to “arrogant jerk”. Boxer knows him better than you think.