THE JOKE’S ON CONGRESS

There were two noteworthy hearings last Friday (9/24) on what was otherwise a slow news day in Washington D.C.

Comedian Stephen Colbert testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on migrant farm workers as a character he plays on his television show.

A former head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that Justice is refusing to prosecute cases of intimidation of white voters, or of vote fraud.

Journalists flocked to cover Mr. Colbert’s testimony, but largely ignored that of the Justice Department whistleblower, Christopher Coates.

“I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican,” Mr. Colbert said in his role as a clueless conservative news commentator.  “I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.”  He asked that a videotape of the results of his colonoscopy be placed in the Congressional record.

Some in the audience laughed, but few of the lawmakers cracked a smile.  Perhaps they realized they were being played for fools.

One who didn’t was the subcommittee chair, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Cal.  Dana Milbank of the Washington Post said she acted like a “star struck groupie.”

Congressional hearings cost taxpayers upwards of $100,000, according to Megyn Kelly of Fox News.  Some wondered if the money was well spent.

“It was lost on no one that the Comedy Central faux news anchor delivered his off color rant against the backdrop of the House cancelling floor votes for the rest of this week as Democratic leaders struggle to reach consensus on how to move a simple stopgap spending bill that will prevent the government from shutting down Oct. 1,” wrote Marin Cogan and Jonathan Allen of the Webzine Politico.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed Mr. Colbert’s appearance at the hearing.  But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said his appearance was an “embarrassment.”

Mr. Hoyer wasn’t alone in thinking that.

 “With an election only five weeks from now in which Democrats are poised for major losses, this morning’s depiction of Congress as ludicrous dupes of a TV personality…will make the analogistic point that the majority is unfit to be running things,” said John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine.

But whether she intended to do so or not, Ms. Lofgren did the Obama administration a favor by giving journalists an excuse not to report on the far more substantive hearing held by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  With the honorable exception of the Washington Post — which put its story on that hearing on the front page Saturday — other news organizations relegated the story to a few bland paragraphs, or — in the case of the New York Times — ignored it altogether.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights had issued a subpoena to Mr. Coates to testify about the Justice Department’s handling of a case of voter intimidation outside of a polling place in Philadelphia by members of the New Black Panther party.  The suit was brought by Mr. Coates in the waning days of the Bush administration.  The Obama administration essentially dropped it just as a federal judge was about to rule in Justice’s favor.

His superiors at Justice ordered Mr. Coates to defy the subpoena, but he chose to testify anyway.

“A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration,” the Washington Post said.

The controversy had been “lower level” chiefly because journalists mostly had ignored testimony given in July by J. Christian Adams, who had worked on the New Black Panther case as a Justice Department lawyer.  Mr. Coates, who had been a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union before joining Justice, reinforced Mr. Adams’ charges of racial bias and scofflaw behavior at Justice, and provided additional examples.

“Coates verified that the DOJ is infested with racially motivated hostility towards equal enforcement of the law,” Mr. Adams said.

The Democratic Congress that thinks it’s important to hear testimony from comedians has had no interest in the charges made by Mr. Adams and Mr. Coates.  If there is a Republican Congress after Nov. 2, it is likely to be more curious.