John Dingell's "Twas the Week Before Christmas"

The Core RPGC Main Forum
#1

I know that this isn’t the time of year that most people follow news, particularly political news. If they did, it’d probably be hard to have a happy holiday season. However, that doesn’t mean that governments go to sleep (though they’re about to), and it doesn’t mean that important things don’t happen.

For example, this morning, the extension of the US Patriot Act was successfully filibustered (meaning that it probably won’t pass, certainly not in its current form). While that’s probably the most <I>important</I> news of the week, that hardly makes it the most <I>interesting</I> news of the week.

May I introduce to you <A HREF=“http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.RES.579:”>HR 579</A>, a resolution presented to the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 by <A HREF=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Ann_Davis”>Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA)</A>, <A HREF=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Bartlett”>Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)</A>, and <A HREF=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Goode”>Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA)</A>, and <A HREF=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_B._Jones”>Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)</A>. This bill states that it “[e]xpress[es] the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected.” That’s right, it’s a bill based on Bill O’Reilly’s defense of the fictional “War on Christmas.” At least these four congressmen (and woman) wished to have the United States House of Representatives protect the symbols and traditions of Christmas from secular Americans.

One man stood strong against this complete ridiculousness. <A HREF=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dingell”>Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)</A>, who is the Dean of the House of Representatives (the longest standing member of the House), felt that this resolution was so completely insane, that on the house floor, he read a poem that he wrote about the issue. Here is the poem, in its entirety:

Happy Holidays, everyone. I hope you got a kick out of this, too.

#2

This is the best thing that came out of a government office from any country in a long, long time. Are you telling me he actually stood up during session and read this for everyone?

This is real solid gold.

#3

Stood right up and read it during session. You could hear a couple of congresspeople laughing in the background, and there was thundrous applause at the end. <A HREF=“http://msnbc.msn.com/”>NBC News’</A> <A HREF=“http://countdown.msnbc.com/”>Keith Olbermann</A> put it to music on his broadcast on Thursday night (the 15th), along with Christmas-y graphics and music. Afterwards, Olbermann interviewed Dingell, who mentioned that Christmas should be a time that people spend with their families and with the lord. He came off as far more religious on the interview than on the floor, and for that I commend him. Anyone who’s devoutly religious, and is still smart enough to separate that belief from politics is respected by me.

#4

I almost want to move to his district so I can vote for him. That was awesome.

#5

It was. We need more politicians like Dingell.

#6

I agree. Here’s video footage of the poem, courtesy of the House Democrats:

http://www.democrats.house.gov/news/librarydetail.cfm?library_content_id=590

#7

the video doesn’t want to work for me :confused:

#8

It’s a streamed WMV, perhaps in WM9 or 10 format. Is your WMP up to date?

#9

I think so… I really hate that format though and my comp shares my that hate… WMV never seems to agree with anything I want to run it on, even WMP. All I ever get is some 500 byte file that IE doesn’t know what to do with and keeps getting grabbed by getright on firefox.