By Frank James

If you decide to verbally spar with Rep. Barney Frank you'd better bring your A-game, meaning a quick-wit and the ability to deliver a killer one liner. Because he can, and anyone who's watched him in action over the years knows he can rhetorically cut you sharply, fast and deep if you're not careful.

Evidently a woman who attended his town hall meeting last night didn't know this. Or maybe she was just feeling brave. Whatever the case, it was kind of like watching a car crash.

WOMAN: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy as Obama has expressly supported this policy? Why are you supporting it?
FRANK: When you ask me that question? I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?

(Oh snap. Applause and cheers from the crowd. The woman first appears stunned, like she doesn't know how to respond to this verbal haymaker. Then she begins to talk again, more forcefully this time, but the microphone doesn't pick up her words. Maybe it was turned off?)

FRANK: You want me to answer the question? Yes, you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis.My answer to you is, I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.

(The woman keeps talking. Perhaps this is what is done in such moments on the planet she hails from. )

FRANK: Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.

Ah, the coup de grace. Although the woman didn't seem to realize it. She had just been served so well, and by a master, in a moment that would wind up on YouTube and the cable channels, that the only the completely oblivious could keep on going. Which is what she did.

categories: Congress

1:20 - August 19, 2009

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