Are you a fan of Caitlin Flanagan? Did you enjoy her most recent Atlantic piece? The one where she excoriated the “jackbooted tots” who invaded Dianne Feinstein’s office and held the good Senator and her staff prisoner at gunpoint until Feinstein ordered them to stand down using only her trademarked Elder Stateswoman Glare and a stately no further nonsense from you, young missies? (They even “neglected the honorific” by having the impudent audacity to refer to the Senator as “Feinstein.”)
Why, then we have special a treat for you! In a rare glimpse into our extensive archives of everyone and everything (don’t worry about it), Current Affairs presents exclusive, never-before-seen excerpts from Caitlin Flanagan’s previous political essays.
Jeff Flake Doesn’t Need To Answer To You (2018)
The aggrieved female flashmob entered the elevator, saying they wanted “Flake” (dropping the honorific) to do something about “Kavanaugh” (again, dropping the honorific). Some of them wore pink, which is a deeply unserious color. Flake, presenting a master class on noblesse oblige, responded with fortitude and nearly Roman dignity. And yet the tank-driving tarts wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the elevator, Jeff Flake—pressed blue suit, Mormon haircut, patience of Moroni—stood strong.
He told the women they were not going to affect his vote.
When Flake asserted his authority—his voter-given right—to ignore the AK47-toting hussies’ outrageous demands upon him, those woad-painted trollops started falling apart. Their venomous teeth popped out of their heads. They cowered, crying, not yet quite understanding whom they had been messing with. Jeff Flake has been doing his job for multiple years. He’s a voice of sober reason, a veteran gambler who knows how the game is played, one of the most revered and irreproachable figures in the entire history of the world…a goddamn United States senator.
Senator O’Gorman Stands Like Bold Leonidas Against the Persian Horde (1915)
“Did you vote for me?” Senator O’Gorman asked the self-described “Suffragettes,” these chainmailed charlies who have adopted a by-any-means-necessary approach to securing their laughable demands for “equality” in the face of “catastrophic unfairness.”
“We can’t vote,” one of the women responded. “That’s why we’re here.”
“That’s what I thought,” said the Senator, exuding the stately grace only a Senator can exude, which smells vaguely of McSorley’s Laudanum Salts, available at your local apothecary.
Act Up? More Like Stop Acting Out (1996)
“You don’t understand parliamentary procedure,” said Senator Bruno.
The ACT UP protester only glowered, childishly. He remained stubbornly chained to the desk. In his obstinance he wouldn’t take no for an answer, apparently failing to grasp not only how joint subcommittee resolutions work, but also that this is not how you treat an old man.
“Politics,” said Senator Bruno to me later, over whiskey and cigars, “is a profession. I am here to do my job. These activists,” he snorted with exquisite grace, “won’t take the time to figure out how Albany works. They don’t understand how hard my job is.” He sighs, like an old warhorse who’s lived through every battle, surrendered when he had to, and dined each Saturday at a $500-dollar-a-plate fundraising dinner thrown by an insurance industry heiress. “Activists. You know what their problem is? They just don’t know how to get things done.”
