I wish I could be a public figure or movie star. How many times have you daydreamed about heaping such riches and notoriety upon yourself? Everyone does it. But really, how different are public figures from us lay folk? Not very.
Take politicians, for example. We elect them to do our bidding. They work for us, the public and are supposed to have our best interests in mind. But just like us regular folk, politicians get bored at work, too.
A “shocking” photo recently surfaced on the Internet and has been a hot topic in Connecticut’s capitol, as well as nationally, that shows several of the state’s politicians engaging in inappropriate behavior while at a budget debate. Before your minds get too carried away, no, they weren’t having sex or anything that risqué. What they were having was some good, clean fun.
In the photo, Rep. Barbara Lambert is shown playing spider solitaire while right next to her, Rep. Jack F. Hennessy enjoys a game of regular solitaire. An unidentified lawmaker sitting in the row behind them can clearly be seen checking baseball scores on the Internet, as well.
This photo has gained a lot of notoriety over the past few days and has led many bloggers to wonder whether lawmakers are taking their jobs seriously. Honestly, who reading this hasn’t browsed the Internet while at work? Who here hasn’t played solitaire or Minesweeper during the middle of a long-winded lecture?
I don’t think the picture is shocking in the least bit. It just shows that politicians are bored at work like the rest of us.
Politicians are as crazy as the rest of us, too, in case you didn’t already know. According to the British tabloid, The Independent, the wife of Japan’s Prime Minister-elect claims in a new book that she was “abducted by aliens” 20 years ago. Yukio Hatoyama, 62, has something in common with your regular backwoods Arkansas hillbilly — she, too, has traveled to the planet Venus in an all-too-familiar alien abduction story.
I can’t imagine what the fallout would be if Michelle Obama claimed she had been abducted but, if you recall, this isn’t the first time aliens have been mentioned in politics.
In 1969, Jimmy Carter, then-governor of Ga., reported to the International U.F.O. Bureau that he had seen an unidentified flying object hovering over Leary, Ga. Even though Carter himself has said that he doubts the UFO to have been of alien origin, he still said that he would “never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky.” Understandable. Crazy people usually respect other crazy people.
Carter also claimed that, if elected, he would make “every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.” That, obviously, didn’t happen. Perhaps the aliens got to him first?
As you can see, politicians and public figures are, in effect, just like us. They share our vivid imaginations and slack off at work, just like we do. In fact, they even — oh, forget it, I have a high score on Minesweeper to go beat.
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and a columnist for the Daily 49er.