I Motion That You STFU

I'm officially back to not wanting to see anything having to do with politics thanks to this whole Sotomayor business. As I was listening to another Republican bring up the "wise Latina" bit for the fiftieth time (I suspect that the plan was to annoy her until she decided it wasn't worth it), I realized once again that this whole confirmation process that was being televised had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not she would be confirmed. In fact, it had nothing to do with her at all. It was just another opportunity for a handful of Republicans to make sure that they spouted the correct talking points so they could be seen on Fox News fighting the good fight.

Let's not single out the Republicans either. I heard an interview on NPR the other day with Nancy Pelosi where the interviewer was asking about the whole "did the CIA mislead you" thing. Pelosi, who had no qualms about outright saying that they did previously, not only dodged the question, but got outright rude about it, making it perfectly clear that she was there intending to discuss...well frankly, I didn't give a damn by then. What was clear was that she wanted to, again, cover a handful of talking points that her side had agreed on and then get out of there.

I guess what's bothering me is that you can't get away with that in the private sector. I'm trying to imagine team meeting where my manager asks how my project is going, and instead of answering, I point out that while we could discuss my current work, I'm really more concerned about the overall health of our team and think we should start planning a fitness program for us. If she tried to get the meeting back on topic, I may very well accuse her of not caring about our well being in addition to being prejudiced against fat people, not because I actually believe she's prejudiced against fat people (although in all fairness, I've never asked), but because later when she's trying to accuse me of being non-productive, I can bring it up and try to spin it as her just not liking me due to lack of fitness, which is of course totally unfair as I'm a programmer and our version of physically fit is "not immediately mistaken for a walrus".

Goo goo g'joob.

Anyway, I'm guessing that such a derailment would get me a talking to, and for good reason. In the real world, if you're not there to get something done (or occasionally digress the situation for a momentary snicker or two, something I will happily admit to doing), you're generally invited to get the Hell out. For some reason, we don't expect the same from many of our public servants, who seem perfectly happy using whatever platform they see fit to discuss affirmative action or health care or Argentinian soul mates or whatever damned thing that comes to mind. If these people really need an outlet for spouting this stuff off, they should all get blogs and keep their work time to actual work.

Well, that or all public hearing and conferences should be held in internet forums, where such derailment is expected and can be swiftly dealt with with an appropriate image.