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| Pazniokas |
The Jonathan Swift prize for Gentle Satire in Journalism may be awarded this year -- in a very private ceremony not opened to the public, on the third floor of Connecticut’s state Capitol, in the hallway abutting the Democrat Party caucus room, closed during strategy meetings to both the general public and the state’s news media – to CTMirror’s Mark Pazniokas.
Swift, it may be recalled
by students of satire, was the author of the bitterly satiric “A
Modest Proposal,” subtitled, “for preventing the children of poor people
in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them
beneficial to the public.”
Pazniokas, to be
sure, is not bitter, but a bitter attitude is the least part of gentle satire.
Swift’s “modest proposal”
was that children of the poor in Ireland should be usefully cannibalized, and
no part of the food source should be allowed to go to waste: “Those who are
more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the
skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and
summer boots for fine gentlemen.”
Pazniokas begins his
gentle satire, “Upstairs,
Downstairs: In CT Capitol, Senate is off limits, House is open,” with a feathery
poke: “The House and Senate Democratic majorities diverged sharply and
awkwardly Wednesday on questions of COVID-19 and public access to a state
Capitol that has been largely closed for nearly two years.”
The use of the word “awkward”
here is satirical genius.
When Windsor
Castle in Great Britain suffered a devastating fire 30 years ago, a
reporter rudely shoved his mic under the nose of the Queen Mother and asked how
she felt about the near loss
of her residence.
“Awkward,” returned
the Queen Mother.
While the State
House on the second floor of the Capitol building is open for business as usual,
the State Senate, located on the third floor, remains closed to the public – very
awkward, even though COVID, like the gentle rain, falls equally on the House,
often called “the people’s House,” and the Senate, whose overlord is President
Pro Tem Martin Looney, a political fixture who resides in New Haven, the motto
of which is “New Haven: It all happens here!”
Defending the
closure of the State Senate to the general public, the lugubrious and lawyerly Looney said, “Our
primary concern is trying to do everything we can to make sure we don’t go off
the rails with an outbreak of illness, because we have a very finite amount of
time in order to get through the session. We’re three weeks into a 12-week
session. I think it’s prudent to wear masks. We have run into problems in the
past when we have underestimated this disease.”
Looney does not imagine his comrades in the House passing along COVID, perhaps in various comminglings, to his brethren in the Senate, although COVID has shown itself to be no respecter of political status.
Democrat Speaker of
the House Matt Ritter begged to differ with Looney. “The building functions better when
people are there to provide information,” said Ritter. And House Minority
Leader Vincent Candelora agreed: “We are now seeing, in my opinion, an absurdity.
This process is the people’s business, and we need to go beyond Zooming and
allow for the discussion and conversation in person [as] we had in the past.”
For Looney –
Pazniokas did NOT note in his story – absurdity is the better part of valor. Is
it possible that after having run the state behind an iron curtain for two
seemingly interminable years, always in conjunction, one must suppose, with
Governor Ned Lamont, Looney has become addicted to stature and power? Nearly
every autocrat exercising unchecked power in the past has told us that
government is much more efficiently administered in the absence of legislators
and judges and the general public, who simply complicate governmental rule.
To be sure, reporters
and political commentators in the state do not often remind us that
representative government is slow and sometimes inefficient. To do so would be –
what’s the word? – awkward.
“Looney and Ritter,”
Pazniokas closes out his gentle satire, “held a joint in-person press
conference Wednesday on the first floor on their shared support of expanding
the Earned Income Tax Credit, but they remain at odds on COVID precautions.
“Ritter said he and
Looney remain on cordial terms, despite the Upstairs, Downstairs dynamic.
“’Marty and I have a
very strong relationship,’ Ritter said.”
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