You Can Dress ‘Em Up. But You Can’t Take ‘Em Out.

It seems that the leadership of the United States Congress is concerned that their members will make fools of themselves when the pope comes to call.

Pope Francis is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress, and those who know them best are worried that members of the House and Senate will grab the pope, try to take selfies and engage in partisan grandstanding.

Now, why would anyone thing our elected officials would behave that way????

I wrote about it for The National Catholic Register. Here’s part of what I said:

You can dress ‘em up.

But you can’t take ‘em out.

Who? Why the honorable members of the United States Congress. That’s who.

Pope Francis is coming to town, and America’s elected officials are as agog as the rest of us.

For the first time in a long time, I get where Congress is coming from. I don’t know if I could survive the excitement of being in the same room as the Pope. I might cry. I might shake and shout. I might keel over in a dead faint. But could anyone trust me to not reach out and touch him?

Yes. Yes, they could. Reach out and touch the Pope? Uh-huh. Not me. I’m a full-fledged member of the Pope Francis Old Women’s Groupie Society. But I’m not the traditional kind of groupie who crashes through barricades to throw myself in his arms. I’m more the stand there and cry like a baby type.

It appears that several members of Congress are also members of the Pope Francis Groupie Society; so much so that Congressional leadership is going full-court press to make them behave during the Pope’s address to the joint session and afterwards. Not only are members of the leadership working surveillance of their colleagues to make sure that none of them reach out and grab the Holy Father like a teen-aged girl grasping for a rock star, they also plan to lock the members in the chamber for a while so that they can’t get out and track the Pope down afterwards.

Members have been cautioned that partisan applause for something Pope Francis might say that they feel agrees with their politics is also not allowed.

Did you get that? Members of Congress are being forbidden from engaging in aggressive applauding at their colleagues on the other side of the aisle during a joint session!

You do know that all that applauding when a speaker says something they like is aimed at each other, don’t you?

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/rhamilton/you-can-dress-em-up-but-you-cant-take-em-out/#ixzz3maTuq5XV