Boggs Peters Out

Lindy Boggs, who took the congressional seat that she only got because her husband died in a plane crash and used it to show women were independent and capable, has died at the age of 97. Hale Boggs had served Lousyana for 28 years in the House when his plane went down in Alaska in the fall of 1972 and although he had been presumed dead, the dim-witted rubes that made up his constituency re-elected him anyway, presumably as the only words they could read on the ballot. When Lindy ran for her husband’s seat in a special election in March 1973, based on her qualifications as a congressperson by injection, the bayou buffoons reflexively voted for any Boggs on the ballot. The only thing that kept Wade from ruling the Pelican State with an iron fist for the last 40 years was the fact that he was 18 and living in Florida. Taking advantage of the keen attention to detail of your typical congressman, she took it upon herself to add the words “sex or marital status” to an amendment to a lending bill banning discrimination on the basis of race, age or veteran status. Thus was sex discrimination prohibited by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. She championed higher pay for senators and congressmen to raise the quality of legislators and reduce turnover in her own counter to term limitations, and also was the rare southern white politician to champion the civil rights movement, a stance that kept her landslide re-elections coming even after redistricting left her district with a black majority. As part of her championing women in the workplace, she also produced ABC News commentator Cokie Roberts and Barbara Boggs Sigmund, the former mayor of Princeton, NJ.

Burying the Lede

Or

-30-

Helen Thomas, the Rondo Hatton of the Washington press corps, has died at the age of 92. One of the first women in the Washington press corps covering politics, she harassed every president from Eisenhower to Obama for United Press International, moving to Hearst Newspapers after the Moonies took over UPI, before the Lebanon-born journalist’s comments about Israel forced her retirement. Thomas was the first woman to be elected as president of the White House Correspondents Association, the first elected to the Gridiron Club, an ink-stained sausage fest for 90 years, and the only one to accompany President Nixon to China. When Fidel Castro commented on the difference between democracy in Cuba and democracy in the United States, he said "I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas." As the dean of the White House press corps, for decades she held a first-row seat, asked the first question at presidential press conferences, then ended them with her signature “Thank You, Mr. President,” a scene she duplicated in Dave. She was less charitable to other men named Klein years later, asserting that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. In becoming the first member of the media to question the United States’ one-sided approach to the two-state solution, Thomas became a pariah, drawing wide-spread condemnation and nary a moment of reflection.

Finn-ished

Cory Monteith has proven once again that things come late to Canada and are usually spelled wroung, providing a self-destructive drug-addled Cory to the Great White Landscape almost 30 years after the Corey phase had ended in the US. The 26-year-old awkward, goofy actor-drummer entered the pantheon of TV immortals as Finn Hudson, star quarterback turned lead show choir singer, on Glee, in a character development arc not at all mirroring Oz on American Pie. He entered the land of mortals following a fatal combination of heroin and champagne in a Vancouver hotel at the age of 31.

Drag and Drop

(More merit for Monty)

Douglas Engelbart, who did lots of dull stuff I don’t really understand and also invented the computer mouse, has died at the age of 88. The prototype, a wooden, two wheeled piece of crap that looks like it would earn a C at a high school science fair, was patented by his employer, the Stanford Research Institute and licensed to Apple Computer for $40,000, with Engelbart not receiving a dime in royalties. So not that bright a guy after all.