DNYUZ
You probably watched or heard or saw all or some of Nancy Pelosi’s farewell speech on Thursday. If you’re a political junkie and had the time, you may have taken a few moments out of your day to lay work to the side and tune in. It was a legitimately historic moment: The woman called by many, and not without justification, the most effective speaker in the country’s history, and a historymaker at that since she was the first woman speaker, deserved a few minutes of your time.
Well, not if you’re Kevin McCarthy. The probably incoming speaker skipped it. “I had meetings,” he said. “But normally the others would do it during votes. I wish she could have done that—could have been there.”
I think that means that Pelosi slated her speech at some kind of special time when no votes were scheduled, and he’s so impossibly busy that every minute when votes aren’t scheduled is taken up by meetings (unsaid part: with rich donors telling him what to do and not to do with his new, slim majority or with extremists plotting how to impeach Joe Biden). Sure, he is a busy guy. That might well serve as a good excuse if the thing he’d missed were the commemoration of National Porcupine Day.
But really, McCarthy knew what he was doing. This was just a huge and intentional “Fuck you” not only to Pelosi but to tradition and decorum and plain old manners.
Hold on, you say. Maybe there is no such tradition. Maybe the librul media is hyperventilating over a nonstory. Do incoming speakers of the other party always attend the farewell addresses of their predecessors? Did Jonathan Trumbull attend Frederick Muhlenberg’s farewell address (if he even gave one) in 1793?
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