Diary of a Mad Black Congresswoman

I have been meaning to write about this alleged assault of a Capital Police Officer by Congresswoman McKinney after the Capital Police Officer did not recognize McKinney as a member of Congress and tried to stop her from entering a House office building when she did not present identification. What has fascinated me about the story is not so much the actual incident, but Congresswoman McKinney's attempt to spin the incident. Here's a short snippet from her interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

BLITZER: Welcome back. We're continuing our conversation with Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and her two attorneys, James Myart -- he's in Washington, D.C. -- and Mike Raffauf. He's in Orlando. Congresswoman McKinney did you strike one of those Capitol police officers during this incident on Capitol Hill?

MCKINNEY: Wolf, before you bring on my two attorneys, let me just say for the record -- and this is something that you might want to do a little further investigation on. But I'm sure that if you would look, you would find that even inside the Capitol Hill Police Department, there are problems inside with the treatment of -- or the respect for diversity, let me say.

BLITZER: Because you know there are many black officers on Capitol Hill, Congresswoman?

MCKINNEY: I think you should look at some of the proceedings that are going on right now with black officers and white officers inside Capitol Hill Police Department. And you might reach a different conclusion.

While that performance was pretty impressive, she saved her best for Soledad O'Brien on CNN's American Morning:

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: First, Congresswoman, can you tell me from the very beginning, what happened on that day, Wednesday? You're trying to come in to your office to go to a meeting, I know. What happened?

REP. CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, (D) GEORGIA: Good morning, Soledad. Thank you so much for having us on this morning. Let me say that this has become much ado about a hairdo. And the real issue . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, and I hear you, but I'm going to stop you there because -- let me . . .

MCKINNEY: You can't stop me, Soledad. The real issue is . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, I want to get to what happened first, and then we'll get into the real issue because we need to establish what happened.

MCKINNEY: The real issue is face recognition and security around the Capitol complex. And I have an e-mail here from a former page saying that 16-year-old pages are required to know by name and by face all of the members of Congress. Shouldn't Capitol Hill police officers be required to do the same?

I have a few thoughts. One, whoever in her office decided that it would be a good idea to go on all these interviews should be fired. Two, which is related to point one, if you're not going to talk about what happened, why do these interviews? I understand for legal reasons you might not give the whole story, but if you don't want to say anything, then don't do the interviews. Don't try to dodge these questions about what happened by talking about how you're a victim of racial profiling or that the Capitol Police lacks diversity. When Congresswoman McKinney did that, she looked absolutely foolish and frankly, a little racist (one of the few times I kind of agree with Tom DeLay). My third and final thought is, how has McKinney won multiple elections? I mean I know there's 535 members of Congress, and there's bound to be a few crazy ones, but you would think the crazy ones would be weeded out after a term or two. Yet McKinney has won, according to my count 6 terms (1992-2002, 2004-Present). Who's running against her in the Democratic primary, the Grand Wizard of the KKK?

Unfortunately for comedic sake and for the Republicans, McKinney has smartened up a little bit and issued an apology for her actions (a potential indictment and becoming a pariah in your own party will do that). But I hope for the sake of having one less crazy person in Congress that the fine people in McKinney's district get a couple of neurons firing in their brain and elect someone, I don't know, who's somewhat sane.