Pete Stark is no longer my representative.
In Stark’s long and spotted political history, he has committed a number of unseemly acts. He instigated a ruckus in the senate cloak room to delay a scheduled vote. He has called a fellow congressman a “little fruitcake” and challenged him to fisticuffs during a Ways and Means Committee meeting. Stark branded a congresswoman was as a “whore” and left insulting voice mail messages on a constituent’s answering machine.
Stark even referred to Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Wade Sullivan, an African American, as “a disgrace to his race.”
Politics can create tension, and no person is immune from heated hyperbole. Yet Stark perpetually displays a level of vulgarity more suited to an Oakland shipyard tavern than the halls of congress. It is Pete’s good fortune that his fellow congressmen are more restrained than your average longshoreman, otherwise Pete would have had his clock punched years ago.
Now newswires are buzzing with Stark’s latest unstable rant, asserting that Bush sends our boys and girls “to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”
Ellen Tauscher attempted to cage Stark by taking to the house floor and reminding him that personal attacks are not permitted there. Alas, she was too late as Republicans capitalized on Stark’s eruption. “I always believe when your political opponents are committing suicide, there’s no reason to murder them,” was the tactic House Minority leader John Boehner chose.
Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan echoed that refrain saying “Pete Stark’s out-of-control rant is an insult to every American, Democrat or Republican. It is one thing to disagree with the war in Iraq, but it is another to go to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and rave that the men and women of the United States Armed Forces are ‘[blowing] up innocent people.’”
Stark has clearly fallen into the spiral of a man with no remaining self control. Like a wino who cannot let go of a bottle, Stark has no other form of political dialogue than the idiocy of insult. Eloquence and persuasion have given way to bombast and back-biting. Damn the diplomacy, full diatribe ahead!
At a time when Americans are looking for common grounds on complex issues, especially a clean and well managed end to the war, Stark’s screeds are at best nonproductive, and at worst an impediment to the nation and world. Pete’s inability to control his tongue speaks volumes about the core of his soul.
That assumes he has one. Unlike the approximately 90% of Americans surveyed who believe in God, Stark is a plainly avowed atheist, putting Pete out of step with his constituents rhetorically, emotionally, and philosophically. In short, he no longer represents the thoughtful, deliberative and peaceable people of the east bay.
Thanks for your service Pete, but it is time for you to leave the political stage.
Email This Post
