We looked up “smug” in the dictionary and found this portrait of Wyoming Rep. Harlan Edmonds, who volunteered to fill in for Montana legislators who declined to go full-tilt zany this session.
State Sen. Fred Thomas, R-Stevensville, said he got the idea for his bill to put new restrictions on food stamps from talking to store clerks.
He said cashiers told him people were using food stamps for soda pop, frozen pizza and energy drinks, among other items he deemed innutritious.
That’s really a strange coincidence, because I was talking to a clerk at a McFiny’s store the other day and she said a friend of hers, who works at a convenience store in Helena, told her that most Republican legislators are heartless halfwits.
“Come on,” I said to her, “that’s just not fair. You can’t make judgments on our lawmakers based on that kind of hearsay.”
After a moment’s reflection, she agreed with me. I wish somebody would have made the same point to Fred before he embarrassed himself, but you can’t save everybody.
I bring this up because it occurred to me that, compared to the last five or six sessions of the Montana Legislature, there seems to be a marked decrease in what you might call flamboyant craziness. Thomas’ remark was pretty clueless, but it was also pretty inane, compared with the remarks of his predecessors.
In recent sessions, all sorts of previously obscure legislators would say something on the floor or House, in a caucus or at a committee hearing and within 24 hours they were YouTube sensations, awing people around the world with their zaniness.
Ed Kemmick
Oh, we’ve still got crazy, but mostly they are recycled, watered-down versions of the crazy that used to make headlines.
Take the bill introduced by Rep. Randall Pinocci, R-Sun River. His HB 583, which was rejected by the House, was aimed at that rather moth-eaten bogeyman known as Agenda 21.
I loved the Bozeman Chronicle’s deadpan description of Agenda 21, from the perspective of people like Pinocci, as “a U.N. plan to abolish private property rights, force urbanization and indoctrinate children in support of a totalitarian regime. The bill would block it.”
What Agenda 21 really was, of course, was a nonbinding resolution signed by 170 heads of state in 1992, pledging collaboration on sustainable development. It was approximately as frightening as the U.N’s “global call to action on ending distracted driving.”
That “call to action” was invoked by the head of the local Tea Party a few years back, when the Billings City Council was debating a ban on cell phone use by drivers. The Tea Partier solemnly testified that the U.S. Department of Transportation was conspiring with the U.N. to impose an international cell phone ban on drivers.
It’s hard to say why these bogus alarm bells are rung every few years, but I suspect it has less to do with real fears about the U.N. than it does with making use of a good recruiting tool, reeling in recruits who might actually believe such nonsense.
Meanwhile, we have seen, during this legislative session, an actual attempt by outside interests with vast wealth and power trying to control our future. But the threat is not the U.N., it is Americans for Prosperity-Montana.
This is the outfit that made phone calls, set up meetings and sent out postcards targeting Republican legislators who seemed to be courting heresy by keeping an open mind on the subject of possible Medicaid expansion. The heavy-handed effort appears to have backfired, at least in some legislative districts.
But in all things there is a sort of cosmic balance. Just as Montanans were getting used to the idea that this Legislature wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as those of years past—and feeling a little cheated by the idea—along came a legislator from south of the state line to relieve our tedium.
While a Wyoming House committee was taking testimony on a bill to extend anti-discrimination protections to gay and transgender people, Rep. Harlan Edmonds, R-Cheyenne, proposed an amendment making the bill effective “when hell freezes over.”
That’s the spirit! With our own legislators dialing back the crazy and ratcheting down the meanness this year, Edmonds stepped into the breach and made headlines all over Montana.
I’m convinced the story was as big as it was only because nothing quite so dumb or outrageous had been perpetrated by our own lawmakers and people figured, what the hell, Wyoming is close enough.
It also helped that Edmonds, judging from his mug shot, looked as though he’d just been elected mayor of Smug Town. So let’s all send the little twit a Big Sky thank you for picking up the slack.
