| I can't believe I'm writing about anything so idiotic as 2nd District Congressman Lee Terry's shouting profanity at a Washington D.C. motorist who'd questioned his decision to jaywalk ("Can't you read the sign?"). But, the plot has thickened, and we now have a great controversy over what really happened.
On Saturday, Eric posted the link to the initial CQ Politics report on Terry's unbecoming and embarrassing blow-up. Terry responded with the following defense of his actions in today's Omaha World-Herald:
Terry confirmed the incident to The World-Herald, but with a couple of caveats. First, he said he wasn't jaywalking - he was in the crosswalk with 10 seconds left on the light. Second, Terry said the driver yelled profanities at him first.
"I just was walking by and all of a sudden this guy starts yelling at us and cussing at us, and so I just turned around and gave him it back for a second, turned around and left and that was it," Terry said.
Terry said that he normally would not have responded to "some weird guy yelling at people" but that it had been an intense, frustrating week. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been engaged in lengthy and contentious debates as they wrestle with matters such as health care and climate change....
"In retrospect, I would have just kept ignoring him," he said.
Imagine that - Terry says he did nothing wrong. In fact, he's the victim. After all, "some weird guy" just started yelling at him while he crossed the street. In that situation, anyones natural reaction would be to shout "Fuck you" back at the driver, right? Of course, Terry for some reason left out the part about his holding the hand of that elderly blind woman he was protecting from oncoming traffic. Even then, the only reason Terry succumbed to this momentary flash of perfectly understandable anger was because he was so frustrated with how things were going in Congress.
In other words, you guessed it, the Democrats made him do it!
Yes, Terry certainly is a shining example of personal accountability on this one. And, just in case you're having a hard time buying Terry's version of events, CQ Politics has already responded and isn't backing down:
We stand by our account, but can't swear that the driver didn't swear at any point.
Was Lee Terry really jaywalking? CQ Politics says he was. If the driver had been shouting obscenities at Terry, what exactly was the meaning of that haunting question of "really?" when Terry blew up at him with the F-bomb? Are the reporters at CQ Politics simply out to destroy Lee Terry?
Something doesn't add up here, folks. Alas, we might never know what really happened on that fateful and mysterious day. At the same time, we're left with that most pressing question of all - just who will Lee Terry take his anger out on next time if those damn Democrats keep pissing him off? |
