No, it’s not important: A few days ago, you had never heard of this guy, and in a week, you won’t remember his name. Capitol Hill has about 12,500 legislative staffers and someone in that group must be the dumbest one of them all. Many of those staffers are young and have more political passion than good sense. Every staff director in just about every organization has some “you would not believe what this intern did” story; this is just the most egregious example of a young, dumb staffer who has no clue about what is acceptable. The staffer has been fired.
It’s an ugly story, but not particularly consequential.
Yes, it is important: It is hard to imagine an act that communicates more contempt for that room, what happens there, your boss, or the Senate as a whole. Doing something like that is basically begging to get fired, and yes, that violates the laws of the District of Columbia. …
If you’re buck naked, using the Senate hearing room to make pornography, you hate the place. You hold it in a seething contempt that makes the January 6 rioters look easygoing and well-adjusted by comparison.
[Precisely. Jim makes a few good analogies to other practices of respect in recognizing that there are transcendent values in life that go beyond our own egos. This came up during the debate over John Fetterman’s lack of respect for the Senate itself as expressed in his can’t-hardly-be-bothered wardrobe choices, as Jim also notes, but this goes WAY beyond that to full-on contempt. It should be punished with more than a termination too. — Ed]
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