Congressman Jose Serrano introduced a resolution this week to “honor the World Champion New York Yankees baseball team.” It was your typical meaningless House Resolution that gets passed every time a sports team wins anything. Whether it’s honoring a Division III soccer team or a Super Bowl champion, politicians can’t resist the opportunity of glomming onto the successes of their local sports heroes. Everybody loves a winner and politicians ceaselessly try(sometimes unwanted) to appropriate the triumphs of athletes as their own in an effort to steal the limelight.
However, what’s unique about Congressman Serrano’s House Resolution 893 is that 28 members of the House of Representatives either voted directly AGAINST IT or voted “present” so as not to support the proclomation. For instance, Rep. Steve Driehaus is being lauded as a hero by the Cincinnati Enquirer for his “no” vote. Driehaus is a Democrat from Ohio and a self-described “lifelong” Cincinnati Reds fan. The Congressman says he couldn’t “stomach” voting for the Yankees because, “They bought a World Series.” In a rare show bipartisanship (and player hating), politicians from both sides of the aisle voted against the resolution.
Political scientists and historians, though, are citing votes like this as a concrete example of the “lack of civility” in Congress today. In stark contrast, when Driehaus’ Reds won the World Series in 1975, the author of the Senate Resolution honoring them was Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts (whose hometown Boston Red Sox had just lost to Cincinnati.)
Even a Congresswoman from New York insisted on it being read into the record, “that I am a Mets fan, and I do not associate myself with the previous comments” favoring the Yankees.
This marks the the first time that anyone has ever voted against a resolution honoring a sports team.
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Tags: New York Yankees
November 15, 2009 at 6:40 am |
this is why america sucks ass keep telling yourself how great you are. we are broke the dollar is about to take a dump and this ahole is saying how great the yankees are what a joke we get what we deserve. keep voting the same people in and wonder why they treat us like five yeat olds. i hope and pray the yankees team plane falls out of the sky and hits the boston team plane and we can be done with baseball once and for all. The only good thing to come out of this depression is getting rid of the nhl and mlb