Ladies and gentleman, here is your United States Senate, then and now:
Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7, 1850: “It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States (with) a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Nov. 14, 2023: “I’m not afraid of biting. I will bite. I’ll bite 100 percent. In a fight, I’m gonna bite. I’ll do anything. I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I’ll bite by the way.”
Scientists have long told us that we humans evolved from apes. Maybe now we’re going backward.
This week, the “honorable” Mr. Mullin – a meathead Oklahoma Republican with a martial-arts body who now inhabits what was once known as The World’s Most Deliberative Body – put on quite a show.
At a Senate hearing Mullin got mad at witness Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union, because O’Brien had hurt his feelings in a string of mean tweets. O’Brien had challenged him to a confrontation “Anyplace, Anytime.” Senators since time immemorial had long ignored such silly taunts and conducted themselves in a manner appropriate to their high station in public life, but hey, was a manly man of real manhood supposed to just let a taunt like that go unanswered? Of course not!
“Sir,” he sneered at O’Brien, “this is a time, this is a place. We can do it right here…Stand your butt up then,” whereupon he rose from his seat and started to twist off his wedding ring to maximize his punching power because I guess what real men do in bars down near the tractor pull. Then came this classic admonishment from the committee’s chairman, Bernie Sanders: “Oh stop it! Sit down, you’re a United States senator!”
Mullin is just the latest manifestation of kickass machismo inspired by faux manly man Donald Trump, who set the tone in 2016 when he said this about a protestor at one of his rage rallies: “You’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher.”
Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.