Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank is receiving national attention for his combative town hall meeting yesterday, during which he didn’t take the abuse of his mouth-foaming nutjob constituents like a houseplant, but rather jabbed back with his trademark rapier wit:
“Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table,” he told a woman who compared Obama’s health care reform to the policies of Nazi Germany. “I have no interest in doing it” (here).
(That’s the straightest talk I’ve heard from a politician in a long time, and it’s coming from a gay man.)
One of my favorite stories about Frank come from this in-depth New Yorker profile here:
Paul Begala, the political strategist, was speaking at a fund-raiser for a gay-rights group and said, “When I told my father, back in Texas, that I was speaking to an L.G.B.T. group, he said that sounded like a sandwich.” From the audience, Frank called out, “Sometimes it is!”
I used to joke that I moved to Massachusetts just so I could vote for Ted Kennedy. Perhaps I’ll move to Newton to vote for Barney Frank.
