A bipartisan group of senators used a "talking stick" to get a meeting under control, but had to switch to a rubber ball after one U.S. senator hurled the stick across the room and broke a small glass statue.
Maine Senator Susan Collins (R), one of the more moderate members of the United States Senate, took a leading effort during the government shutdown to try to get members of both parties to come to an agreement. Borrowing a strategy typically reserved for kindergarten show-and-tells and interventions, Senator Collins decided to use a "talking stick." The senators would pass the talking stick around the room and only the person holding the stick would be allowed to talk. This actually helped to calm the Senators down and ensure that none of them were talking over one another. But at one point, the discussion started spiraling a bit out of control. One Republican senator told news outlets that there was a bit of a scare after one of the speakers threw the talking stick across the room. Growing aggravated by interjected questions, the unnamed senator is said to have "forcefully delivered" the talking stick to the next speaker on the other side of the room. Apparently, "forcefully delivered" is Washington-speak for "chucking it as hard as you can."
The stick missed its mark. Instead of landing in the hands of the next speaker, it flew over their shoulder and struck one of Collins' shelves. Believe it or not, the stick projectile actually chipped a statue of a glass elephant that was on display in Susan Collins' office.
One of the senators decided that it would be better not to have sticks flying across the room, so he showed up to the next meeting with a small rubber basketball instead.
"That was the most entertaining meeting I'd ever been to," one GOP senator said off the record. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) also confirmed that the talking stick had been used in the meeting. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has been taking a central role in trying to negotiate an immigration compromise, admitted that he was growing tired of all the "meetings where they pass the ball around." Notice how he refers to them in the plural.
This really begs the question - Is Congress so dysfunctional that they need to use a talking stick/ball just to get anything done? I understand using one in an elementary school class where children haven't learned their manners yet. I can even see using it in an intervention where tempers and emotions are elevated ("Breaking Bad," anyone?). But I would really hope that Congress would be above these sorts of elementary games.
And to have the stick taken away because someone threw it across the room and destroyed a statue? They actually had to replace the talking stick with a talking ball because a group of senators, members of the greatest deliberative body on earth, couldn't refrain from hurling it across the room like a javelin ...
The government shutdown may be over, but with antics like this, another one is certainly on the horizon. And by horizon, I mean February 8, 2018 -- the deadline for Congress to pass a new budget.
