Topic 198: Talkers

Carol:

The Biography of Phil A. Buster

Right now it seems like the folks we elected to serve our needs in Washington are all talk and no show. Will they come to an agreement on the budget, raise the debt ceiling or not, to increase taxes or not, stall or vote? With all that discussion and debate, even the F word has been thrown around.
 

Filibuster, the process by which United States Senators can delay or even prevent a vote on a bill with a tag-team style talkathon. The word itself, according to the US Government website, comes from a Dutch word meaning “pirate,” as if politicians who invoke the filibuster rule are high jacking the ship of state, if only temporarily.
 

There are rules to the filibuster rule, of course. Speak as long as you want on any topic you choose unless or until three-fifths of the Senate (it was two-thirds until 1975) calls for closure under Senate Rule XXII, or “cloture” if you prefer the more elegant French term. Rule XXII, adopted in 1917 under pressure from Woodrow Wilson, was first used in 1919 to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. How a propos.
 

Filibusters were most often used in the mid- 20th century on civil rights issues, and particularly by southern Senators.  When my family lived in  Louisiana during the 1940’s, my mother sent her parents an editorial from the Houston Post “which amused us but also burned us up a little too. The attitude of the South is so different from ours. They think they are a law unto themselves… And to think that a group of senators could take up a week of valuable time pulling a filibuster as they did!”
 

The 1942  filibuster my mother was referring took place over five days, when southern senators were attempting to forestall legislation that would eliminate the poll taxes used in their states to keep low-income residents from the voting booths (most often African-Americans).  Over thirty years later, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond would take the record for the longest individual filibuster  when he spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the 1957 Civil Rights Act (source: “Filibuster and Cloture”).

Huey Long in mid-talk

My mother also mentioned Huey Long in her letters from Louisiana. Long had been assassinated in 1935 after serving first as Governor of Louisiana and then as its Senator from 1932 until his death. He was a colorful and effective communicator whose Senate tactics are captured for posterity in The U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where his bronze statue shows “this master of the Senate filibuster captured in mid-sentence” (source “Huey Long Filibusters"). His most famous filibuster took place in June 1935 when he spoke for over 15 hours. He began by reading and dissecting every page of the United States Constitution.  When he ran out of topics, reporters in the press gallery sent him notes, and eventually he resorted to talking about southern recipes such as fried oysters.
 

The most famous invoker of Rule XXII was Jefferson Smith—not a southerner and not even a real politician. Who didn’t cry when the naïve young Senator, played by Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, talked himself into exhaustion in defense of his reputation.  Who hasn’t seen that movie and wished for a real Jefferson Smith to bring his honesty and high ideals to Washington.  It took a 1939 movie by Frank Capra to show the world what Phil A. Buster is all about.

Filming Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Sources: 

“Filibuster and Cloture.” US Senate website.
 “Huey Long Filibusters June 12-13 1935.” US Senate website.
          

Megan:

My extended family is full of talkers – people with big voices and big ideas, eager to share gossip, stories, anecdotes and memories. Get us together and everyone is talking at once, and it’s so loud that sometimes my dad has to sit in the car. My immediate family isn’t really like that. My father and brother are very quiet, and I’m only talk a lot if I’m with a good friend. Even my mother, who has the loudest voice after years of projecting it to the back of a classroom, isn’t really a talker.  As with any of us, if there’s a topic we are interested in or passionate about, we can’t shut up about it (I’m looking at you, Genealogy) but generally speaking, there’s a lot of quiet time in our house.

Or, there was before we got the puppy. Milo only makes noise if someone has pulled into the driveway, or Bella is pulling on his ears.  Bella, on the other hand, is a talker. She has a vocal response to pretty much everything (except intruders), but nothing valuable to say. This morning, on our walk, we were plodding along at our usual pace with no wild or domestic animals in the area to distract us, but Bella kept up a steady whine for blocks at a time. She wasn’t pulling on the leash or acting agitated in anyway, but she wouldn’t shut up either.

In the house, she’s been driving my mother crazy by barking to go out, barking to come in, barking to get Milo excited. Even when she’s asleep, she makes noise. If I shift her out of my way, she keeps her eyes closed but releases a deep, guttural rattle – not a growl, more like a groan. She growls too, if I bug her too much, but I ignore that and keep bugging her because I don’t want her to think she can take that kind of attitude with me. It’s not polite.

The other day, I took Bella over to a friend’s house to play with her dog. Our dogs have play dates. I can see how easy it is to let pets become surrogate children --  especially when we use the same language to describe their activities. Anyway, we were sitting in my friend’s back yard and the neighbor pulled into the driveway next door.  My friend’s dog, Lucky, totally ignored the neighbor while Bella went all territorial. 

Her guard hairs stood up, and I always wish I had a camera when that happens because it is the least impressive thing I’ve ever seen. Milo gets a full Mohawk from head to tail when he’s on alert. Bella has one tuft between her shoulders, and one just above her tail – it just looks like she was brushed the wrong way.  But up went her little hairs and she tore over to the fence barking and hollering until I called her back. I reminded her that we were guests, and that if the resident dog wasn’t alarmed, there was no reason for her to be either.

Despite her near-constant vocalizations, she’s turning out to be a good dog. She hasn’t eaten a dead animal in 4 days and hasn’t had an accident in weeks. We’ve still got a ways to go on obedience and sleeping through the night. The other night I found myself quoting to her a specific passage from this book – and by passage, I mean the title.