Mr. Speaker, this is the Congress of the United States of America, not a twelve-step program for compulsive tanners.

Not said better:

Radio Derb Transcript 1/7/11

John Derbyshire

And since no-one else has said the following thing, I'll say it. Boehner's repeated displays of public blubbing are unsightly, undignified, and unmanly. What on earth must the world think, seeing a grown man sniveling and dabbing his eyes on becoming Speaker — third in the chain of command under the President and Vice-President? For crying out loud, Mr. Speaker … no, as you were: for goodness' sake, Mr. Speaker, this is the Congress of the United States of America, not a twelve-step program for compulsive tanners. Show a little Republican gravitas, dammit.

The sheer embarrassing unsightliness of the thing aside, all this weeping betrays a poorly developed sense of proportion. If you burst into tears when Nancy Pelosi hands you the Speaker's gavel, what do you have left when our enemies nuke Indianapolis, or the dollar is trading at par with the Laotian kip, or your wife leaves you or the doctor tells you you have terminal cancer?

That is the essence of sentimentality — lavishing more emotion on a thing than it deserves; and sentimentality has been acknowledged by all serious thinkers to be a species of folly. Dostoyevsky went further, identifying sentimentality with evil.

Folly will do for now, though. Watching John Boehner working his hanky, I found it hard to avoid the thought that we have a fool for House Speaker. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. By any means.