Frank: Funny, Brainy and Eloquent
FRANK
The New Bedford-Standard Times
Anika Clark
The Boston University Washington News Service
9/21/06
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21—This year’s “Best and Worst of Congress” list in the current issue of Washingtonian magazine reads like pages in a high school yearbook: Blue-eyed Gene Taylor of Mississippi is the biggest House “hunk,” California’s Lois Capps is “just plain nice,” and once again, a Massachusetts Democrat scored as class clown.
Rep. Barney Frank topped the lists in three categories this year: the funniest, the brainiest, and the most eloquent member of the House. Although this is his first time he was selected for eloquence, brainiest and funniest have become almost shoo-ins for New Bedford’s congressman.
“Barney Frank usually, in both funniest and brightest, he’s usually way ahead of everybody else,” said Leslie Milk, Washingtonian’s lifestyle editor. “He’s been winning this for years.”
Frank admits he uses wit to try to intimidate his colleagues. “It can be effective politically,” he said. “Sometimes ridicule is inappropriate, but when people say ridiculous things, I do think ridicule works best.”
Frank has no trouble finding targets.
“At this point Dick Cheney,” Frank said of the Vice President, his preferred victim. “Another one is [Massachusetts Gov.] Mitt Romney and Kerry Healey,” who is Romney’s lieutenant governor and is running to succeed him.
Healey, Frank said, is “discovering all these areas where she differs from Mitt Romney. She’s just discovered they differ on stem cell [research], she discovered they differed on abortion, she discovered they differed on gay rights. So I said, ‘She should put all her commercials on the Discovery Channel.’”
One political foe who may become the butt of Frank’s humor is Chuck Morse, Frank’s persistent Republican House challenger, whom he defeated overwhelmingly in 2004. Morse is running for the House again this year.
“He’s not exactly a barrel of laughs when I’m around,” Morse said of Frank, “but I don’t doubt that he’ll use some of his rapier wit, sure.” He described Frank as such a good comedian he should do the Borscht Belt circuit with comic Jackie Mason. “I’ll do the best I can with my rather British understated dry humor and by doing so try to illustrate the ground on which he walks.”
According to Frank’s older sister, Ann Lewis, a former White House communications director, her brother’s humor was years in the making. Recalling his childhood love of television shows like The Milton Berle Show, she said his being funny lets him make key political points that are not soon forgotten. “He really takes on the absurdity of an opposing argument, or finds the flaw, but it’s never personal, it’s always humorous, and it’s memorable,” she said.
As for his characteristic directness, Frank said: “I think the public knows when they’re being danced around and when people are being direct, and I think they appreciate it. I think the public is much less averse to your being straightforward and direct than some of my colleagues think.”
Occasionally, however, he admits his humor can rub people the wrong way. When asked if he ever regrets being so candid, Frank responded, “Oh sure.” He explained: “I try to do a lot. I think that my frustration is I’m trying to do a lot and sometimes because I’m in such a hurry to do things I’m rude to people when I shouldn’t be, and I try to stop that.”
Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass) said he appreciates the laughs. “It’s disarming,” he said. “I’ve seen him many times on the floor, where the humor that he offers takes the tension right out of a debate.”
Frank said there was one other Washingtonian category he would have liked to win. “Straightest shooter,” he quipped. “Yeah, I think I’m just ineligible for that.”
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