Joe Wilson: Our Latest Small Man of the Hour

It wasn't until this morning, when I read this passage in the Politico -- "As he sat in the chamber awaiting the start of the vote, [he] nervously wrote notes on a sheet of white paper" -- that I realized who Rep. Joe Wilson reminded me of: Shelley Berman -- the 1960s stool-sitting stand-up comedian who specialized in playing a sniveling, whining, jittery, neurotic little spoof of a man.

Did I say man? The only good reason to keep contemptible rodents like Wilson around the House -- other than that a lot more contemptible rodents in South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District want him there, and that's their perfectly democratic business -- is to remind us from time to time that at least a few good men, such as South Carolina's Jim Clyburn, still serve.

One could easily sense the wounded dignity and transcendent authenticity of Clyburn's words before voting on the chamber's "resolution of disapproval": "This is not a political stunt," he said in response to those -- hello, John Boehner & Co. -- who understand nothing but political stunts. "I do not participate in political stunts. And I think every member here knows that. This is about the rules of this House and reprehensible conduct."

The latter of which has been served up by Wilson, it seems to me, more glaringly since last Wednesday night. Let's assume that his brief moment of partisan rapture then was unplanned. OK, so he spiked as an unself-disciplined toddler who couldn't hold his tongue at a public event. Any honorable man in pursuit of redemption would have simply apologized to the House and that, as they say, would have been that. Spectacle over.

But not Joe Wilson. Oh, no. His charge -- as unself-disciplined toddlers are wont to do -- became the defense of the indefensible, prattling endlessly about how President Obama had "graciously accepted my apology, and this issue is over." Were any actual, prescribed disciplining to ensue, Mr. Wilson would be but a "victim."

Remember when Republicans in toto used to scoff at that sort of drivel? -- how they'd hammer away at the importance of society's rules and acceptable conduct and personal responsibility and the too-easy avoidance of all of that by screaming "victimization"?

President Obama was wrong -- although, perhaps, tactically right -- when he implicitly urged everyone to just forget the whole thing. It was indeed a "big circus" of distraction at the worst possible time, but here, Obama was sidelining his famous long-term thinking for the greater good: permit this insufferable fool from Dixie to walk away unscathed and there topples yet another column of propriety; one only invites more outbursts, more incivility, more despicable tactics.

Again from the 1960s, I invoke that preeminent philosopher and social commentator on man's rude inhumanity to man, Barney Fife: Let's nip this -- if only the latest "this" -- in the bud.

As much as we can, that is. For Mr. Wilson's little dirtbag of a brain has already sprouted the unspeakable fruits of falsely martyred victimization, raising more than $1.5 million in what the Washington Post this morning calls "a frenzy of small donations."

Some would counter, Well, yeah, but so has his 2010 opponent, Rob Miller; to which I would counter, Well, yeah, but for the right reasons. Have we as an increasingly uncivil and polarized people utterly lost the distinction?

The frequency with which we have indeed lost that distinction in the past has not gone unnoticed by political commentators of a historical bent: for days, now, we've been reminded of, say, the 1856 Brooks-Sumner Affair. Now there was some genuine incivility -- a Congressional outcrop of this nation's worst stain, which plodded decade after decade inconclusively and to our ultimate dishonor.

Yet that's the point. Political tensions and verbal and even physical violence erupted throughout the age of sectionalism over an issue of monumental human importance.

Today, which merely caps about 40 years running of this rakishness, we witness no-holds-barred political misbehavior and demagogic underhandedness being executed in relation to matters of towering inconsequentiality. A two percent surcharge on the highest incomes? Jesus -- the End of America, and somehow Hitlerian.

We are, in short, losing our once-worldwidely respected capacity for rational debate. Gimmicks, stunts, talk-radio insurrections, unhinged blogs, ineffable superficiality and 10-second seething soundbites followed by withering days of sensationalistic media "analysis" are devouring our political character.

Another 40 years of this prepubescent crap and the term "Banana Republic" will seem complimentary.