In political/media circles, the standard buzz phrase for
Alan Grayson, for those of you who (like me) never heard of our new liberal Rambo before his big chart-wielding media breakthrough on the floor of the House Tuesday night, is that he’s The Congressman from the Blogosphere.
Which is to say, he’s loud, in your face, and
snarky. It is the last term in the series that differentiates Grayson from his many headline-grabbing Republican counterparts, who are loud, in your face, and insane.
The GOP Congressional leadership, not being conversant with snark, irony, sarcasm, or Democrats with balls, was horribly shocked and dismayed by Grayson’s appalling breach of decorum in which he pointed out, with scorn and mild exaggeration, the obvious truths that the Republicans have no health-care plan, are against any health-care plan of any kind the Democrats might ever put forward, and care not a whit about fixing America’s health-care crisis.
What is a whit, by the way? Never mind.
Here’s the
YouTube clip of Grayson’s big moment of national exposure if you haven’t seen it yet. You may stand and cheer if the spirit moves you, though tearing off your shirt, painting your torso blue, and blowing an air horn are not necessary.
Or if you’re too lazy to click, the gist of Grayson’s message was this:
If you get sick in America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.
The Republicans demanded that Grayson apologize, thus giving him
the opportunity to snark them all over again. Refreshing. Their hilarious hypocrisy was duly noted by every liberal broadcast commentator all day long, replete with clips of foaming-at-the-mouth Republican Congresspersons doing their Obama’s-gonna-kill-granny-and-set-up-death-panels shtick. Not to mention “you lie.”
Just how long did the Republicans think the Democrats were going to sit there and take it?
(Actually, I was worried it might be forever.)
So, the dossier on Alan Grayson:
He’s six-foot-four. He wears loud, sometimes mismatched, shirts and ties. He’s 51. He represents a (normally Republican) district in Orlando, Florida, that includes Disney World, but grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Bronx High School of Science. He’s Jewish. (Wonder what the original family name was; maybe Grossberger?) He’s very emotional. In a 70-minute interview for a
New Republic profile, (where I copped much of this bio data) he “choked up” five times. He worked his way through Harvard, graduating in three years, then Harvard Law. As a lawyer, he specialized in defending corporate whistleblowers and suing military contractors who defrauded the government. He’s rich, made his money running a calling-card company and investing in, if you can believe this, the Indonesian franchise of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He came to Congress last year, his second try, defeating a four-term Republican incumbent. His flashy campaign ads, likened to rap videos, went viral on YouTube. He joined Ron Paul in calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve. He gave Ben Bernanke a hard time when Bernanke testified on the financial crisis. When they make the Alan Grayson movie it will star either Seth Rogin or Jeff Garlin; I haven’t yet decided which.
More Graysonisms (from a
Christian Science Monitor profile):
When his hometown paper, the
Orlando Sentinel, suggested that “some say” his style “may quickly rub his new colleagues the wrong way,” he responded: “Well, ‘some say’ that the
Sentinel is a trashy tabloid that dresses up bias and gossip as news.”
Introducing Vice President Joe Biden at a fundraising dinner, he suggested that Dick Cheney gave Biden a tour of the White House “dungeon” and “its torture rack.” He joked that Cheney invited Biden to “go waterboarding” with him.
More, as well as less, of Lewis Grossberger's writing can be found at True/Slant.
