SHOUT

For as long as I can remember (and way before then), laundry product marketers have had a superb skill for naming and branding their merchandise. How about BOLD? Wasn’t that the one that had a free towel inside, for those of you alive in 1966? Not sure what TIDE conveys but CHEER seems happy and bright and there is that All-temper-Cheer that gave a gay-all-the-time feeling. Bounce is good, especially when drying linens. They could test beds with Bounced sheets to see if kids jump higher. But my favorite name right now is SHOUT, the stain remover. In fact I’ve had a bottle with me for several weeks now because one never knows when a SHOUT opportunity will come.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Ah, so you put SHOUT on beforehand so the stains don’t stick?”

This political insight was from an assistant in the Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer’s office about the bottle of SHOUT that I was carrying around at the state capitol on Thursday. It was a good day for SHOUT, the morning after the morning when House Republican majority leader Michael Lange lost it in a meeting of House Republicans. He said that the governor could “shove it up his ass.” Really, he said that, and there was a lone, local television news reporter with a camera to get the scoop. It wasn’t long before the clip hit YouTube.com and other internet and national news sites. Who says that the antics of the Texas Leg have anything on Montana’s?

The irony or not was that his ranting came in the context of a tirade about dignity and honor. Oops. More, “So my message to the governor is to stick it up your ass! That’s my message to him. Stick it up your ass.” Now the Helena Independent Record did not run the expletives but replaced them with ** though pronounced sounds like assssss-terisks to me. Their April 26th headline read “Expletives deleted: House speaker’s tirade takes ugly session over the brink.” The editor did think it through as noted in a gold box, “Although the vulgar language referred to in this article is arguably the point of the story, the Independent Record decided to replace some of the more offensive words with as(ssss)terisks. Doing so is the IR’s policy for such language.” A local news station gave a warning about offensive language preceding the report on the evening news. Definitely not HBO.

More, Lange called Schweitzer the “…S.O.B. (already abbreviated so no ** needed) on the second floor that thinks he’s going to run this state like a dictator.” Some of his comments were met with applause from fellow Republicans in the room. On the video, the camera pans to people standing along the wall including several high school pages. Then there are men at the table looking at the floor, scratching an ear, or leaning in with hand over mouth not in surprise but in thought, like “oh, ****, he did not just say that.” But he did and more, “He (the governor) can take every bill and I don’t give a ****…I will not be offered a bribe to turn you lose to go screw the state of Montana …(pause)… on any bill.” Not good for the state tourist bureau no matter how you look at it. One representative chewing gum eyed the camera. Wonder what he was thinking?

Lange alleged that Schweitzer had offered him a bribe in an earlier morning meeting. Later, when asked about that by a reporter, Schweitzer replied that he didn’t even offer Lange a cup of coffee. Well then, what do you expect?

What the governor did offer was a tax-and-budget compromise, an offer to break the stalemate issue at its height on the 88th day of the 90-day session. The state projects a $1 billion surplus for the next two years and there is definitely a difference of O-pinion on funding for schools (for example) and tax rebates. From some observers at the meeting Lange seemed to be open to it but a few hours later it wasn’t working for him. Clearly.

Lange got uglier in his remarks to the House Republicans and enlarged his circle of targets, likening the Democrats to “radical socialists” like those in the “Soviet Union, North Korea and Red China.” He was steppin’ on toes then. Later Lange apologized to members of the House, to which Rep. Bill Wilson, Democrat from Great Falls, replied in a “point of personal privilege” that he’d never heard anything so “vile and insulting as I heard today. …this is a very low point in the history of this body.” And he’s been around for 14 years. He took deep offense at the communists and socialists remarks seeing as his father had landed on Normandy. On Friday, Republican Senator John Cobb would say that the House Republicans were being led by “a couple of thugs.”

Lange ended his tirade with “God bless each and every one of you” after saying he would “go over the cliff with you.” Personally if I was in Republican shoes I’d stay on flat land, tell him to go ahead, and then double back to the building.

To no one’s surprise, the House stalled on budget bills and now the Legislature has to go into a special session, estimated at $38,000 a day and about $1 million total. Though Lange said that he would gladly go without pay, “I don’t give a crap about pay when our way of lifestyle is under threat,” he was helping to send a million dollars of projected surplus down the drain. This because an impasse or debacle or snafu or BFD (no ** needed) speeches or plain belligerence in the House kept the main budget bills moving forward. (I suppose there is finger-pointing at the Senate and definitely back and forth across party lines but for the sake of argument let’s stay with blaming the House Republicans.) Bills that haven’t passed both chambers now go back to the beginning, scratch, do-over to the extreme. This wasn’t a surprise as the Queen City News, the weekly newspaper, had a picture on last week’s cover of a bus with a destination sign (where it often says “Have a nice day”) that read, “Nowhere” and the side stenciled with “Partisan Line.”

The fun part for me was happening into the Capitol the day after THE day with my esteemed and favorite state senator, Christine Kaufmann. It is a definite understatement to say that she is quite happy not to be on the House side anymore. I sat in on the opening of the Senate session that morning. It began with a visit by some of the cast for the Queen City Ballet’s production of Cinderella –maybe the first time drag visited the Senate chambers. It was a delight to see Senate President Mike Cooney get kissed on the cheek by one of the ugly step-“sisters.” He jokingly ruled it out of order. Sen. Kaufmann introduced them “off the record,” of course. Another senator then recognized an athletic director from somewhere I don’t remember because my thoughts were still absorbed with the drag sisters. Then Sen. Kaufmann sought permission to introduce an additional guest to which someone asked if it was another motley cast. She then looked up at me in the gallery and introduced me as one of her constituents (I swelled with pride) and the Writer-in-Residence at the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen. I got light applause and standing welcome from about ¾ of the senate, the Cinderella cast and athletic director had gotten the full body but by then it was like following a dog & pony show. Just another day in the life of Montana politics and laundry, I suppose. I only wished for more SHOUT gumption as I left the building and saw Representative Lange talking with a reporter. I would have loved to have had a picture of him holding SHOUT but I didn’t want to ask and have him tell me to stick my camera up my asssssterisks.

~ ~ ~ ~

Thanks to all y’all who came out to one of my book signings in Texas or just got together with me for fun. Special yee-haw (we really don’t talk like this) for Jodi and Jacki and that fine margarita just-add-Tequila machine. I got a few Texas pictures thrown in here to show that I was doing something book-related while I wasn’t writing on this here blog. I will be back on a regular basis, pinky promise, I swahr. I do appreciate your comments and emails even if I don’t write back.

AND FINALLY, the public is invited to an Open House on Saturday May 5th 12-4pm, at the Rodney Street Laundry. Sandy Shull and Jacquie Gibson will introduce the new co-owners of the Rodney Street Laundry & Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen, Kim and Joe Drew.