Quote of the Day

From Hugh Hewitt, on yesterday's confirmation hearings performance by Delaware Sen. Joe Biden:

Long ago [James] Lileks remarked on Senatitus, a peculiar condition affecting members of the "greatest deliberative body in the world" that leaves them wholly unaware of their buffoon quotient, which is high even when in recess, and never higher than when preening on national television.

I confess, I am addicted to Slow Joe Biden. If he comes on the tube, I have to stop and stare, like every driver crawling past an overturned semi with ambulances and firetrucks and stretchers everywhere. Biden is quite simply the only cartoon with flesh I have ever seen, a wholly ridiculous fellow, but one who is completely unaware of his own absurdity.

"Buffoon quotient." I like that phrase, and Biden, Kennedy, Schumer and — surprisingly, at least to me — Feingold certainly have more than their share of it. (Specter and Graham also seem Senatitus-afflicted, but to a marginally-smaller extent.)