Dear Speaker Johnson: I would like to apply for a job as a professional protester, and am asking for your assistance in securing such employment in the near future.
Your recent comments advising Republican members of Congress to avoid public meetings with their constituents inspired this request. Some members who have attended such events have faced harsh criticism for various budget slashings proposed in furtherance of King Donald’s scorched-earth agenda. Slashings that they are finding uncomfortable to defend.
A news article referred to the situation as members “feeling the heat back home.” Another way to put it might be “catching hell.” So, you, Mr. Speaker, counseled retreat.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” you said at a news conference. “They’re professional protesters. So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?”
It’s tempting to argue that face-to-face gatherings with constituents is part of the compact that elected officials implicitly agree to when they put themselves up for office. Even if those constituents are hopping mad about some blockheaded action taken or condoned by the officials.
Especially if the constituents are hopping mad, I would amend.
You seem to think differently, believing that criticism of Republicans is ipso facto illegitimate, the product of paid provocateurs. And your comment suggests that you have proof that there are (unnamed) groups paying people good money to show up and rudely heckle your fellow MAGA cultists.
Because you don’t know me, please take a moment and allow me to present my credentials to join those hecklers and collect some of that good money.
For more than 40 years, off and on, I have engaged in poking fun at the foibles great and small of politicians, from the local level all the way up to president. (Now king.) In my earlier days in Mississippi that always involved Democrats, since they were the only people who got elected. Fortunately, for my sake, they were more than up to the task of providing topics for ridicule. I am forever thankful for that.
In recent years, Republicans have increasingly taken the helm at all levels of government in the South to steer the ship of state, as it were. And they have proved far more talented than Democrats at setting course for the nearest iceberg. They don’t even seem to have to work at it. It’s almost unfair, as if Republicans are inherently better at causing shipwrecks.
And while this has proved lamentable for the people of this state and the country as a whole, it’s been quite beneficial for me as a critic. There is never nothing to lampoon. A potential topic can often be found merely by answering a simple question: What did Rep. Tim Burchett say today?
Burchett’s 2nd District fief is farther away than I would care to travel, even as a professional protester. But Republican legislators have kindly made it possible for me to visit and protest three members of Congress in their home districts without even leaving Davidson County, should any of those three ever show their faces here.
Do they? I don’t know. I’ve read that our senior senator, Marsha Blackburn, has not appeared at such a gathering anywhere in the state since February 2017. I wonder how that will play with voters if she, as indicated, runs for governor next year.
Getting back to that good money issue: One other item I might inquire about is the pay scale for paid protesters. Is there an hourly rate? A flat fee per disruption? A per-word per diem? I appreciate that you may not be aware of the specifics, so I will raise that issue with whoever you tell me is handing out the dough.
You have that information, right? I hope you’re not just parroting your cult leader, who claimed the town halls were being hijacked by “Paid ‘troublemakers.’” I’m sure a man such as you would never do that.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.