Sen. Ben Tillman (D-S.C.) punched a colleague on the Senate floor in 1902. (Photo via Wikipedia)An editorial in The Baltimore Sun this morning took note of the D.C. Council’s new prohibition on salty language and personal barbs. The Sun’s editorial board was none to impressed by the recent behavior displayed by the Council, but seems relieved with the new rules barring “profane, indecent or abusive language.”
And apparently, the near-fisticuffs last week between David Catania and Marion Barry brushed a little too close to home for the etiquette sticklers at the Sun. The Howard County, Md. Board of Education is a pretty brawling place too, it seems:
At their meeting Feb. 9, board members were debating a proposal to eliminate much of the reading program for middle school students when the discussion veered off course. The trouble began when board member Brian Meshkin, who participated via teleconference from California, accused board leaders of letting him participate in that capacity only because they needed his vote.
From there it was all downhill, with Meshkin, board Chairman Sandra French and former chairman Frank Aquino airing petty complaints and swapping accusations of deceit and lying, and Allen Dyer unexpectedly chiming in with the request that members drop their effort to impeach him, presumably since what was happening on the board was so much worse than anything he ever did.
OK, so not quite as nasty as the D.C. Council, but still unusual enough for the Sun to proclaim, “Oh, my word!”
The paper should really lighten up though. Our councilmembers may be prone to the occasional pottymouth, but compared to other places, the Wilson Building is a veritable peace garden. In Illinois last July, one state senator decked another over family ties to energy lobbyists. Venezuela’s National Assembly broke out into a royal rumble last February. And just this morning a member of the U.K. Parliament was suspended after spending last night in jail for allegedly starting a barfight.
And yesterday, it turns out was the anniversary of a 1902 incident in the U.S. Senate in which the junior senator from South Carolina, John McLaurin, accused his senior colleague, Ben Tillman, of perpetrating “a willful, malicious, and deliberate lie.” Tillman, Senate records tell, spun around and clocked McLaurin something fierce, causing the chamber to “[explode] in pandemonium.”
Last week, Catania might have called Barry a “despicable human being” who is “full of shit,” but at least both men were able to check themselves before exchanging blows. Then again, a week after the 1902 throwdown between McLaurin and Tillman, the Senate passed a new floor rule:
“No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.”
Party poopers of 1902 would have done real well with The Baltimore Sun editorial board of today.
