Posted on 08/30/2002 10:17:31 AM PDT by evilsmoker
Drunk on power Tales from the End-of-Session Bash
Last call: The arrogance of power finds telling manifestations in the waning days of the California Legislature’s session each year, and things get particularly ugly when you mix in copious quantities of booze, as policy-makers did at their End-of-Session Bash last week.
We all like to blow out the pipes after a big project, but these guys had yet to even pass a budget or deal with much of the session's most important bills when they lit up the Sacramento Convention Center like a high school prom without chaperones.
When male legislators don pretty dresses for skits, you better believe there were some serious courage-building tequila shots involved. So the amount of slobber slathered all over every eligible and even not-so-eligible female in the room was high by even the standards of the Capitol, which seems to exempt itself from sexual harassment laws.
The most audacious example was the story widely circulated through the Capitol of a certain Senator getting slapped backstage by an Assemblywoman after he made a lewd comment about her skimpy dress. If only staffers felt enough power to slap a Senator.
Other spectacles were more public, like Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn bumping and grinding on stage with Assemblyman Lou Correa and then the Hip Service bandleader, who finally had to physically remove her so they could play their set.
And the party didn't end there, as the legislators and staffers sloshed over to Simon's afterward, where they were still smoking tobacco and boozing it up until 3 a.m. Yes, that's no typo, and it's no isolated incident either. When the session ends this Saturday night (if it ever ends), expect Simon's to again be hopping well after other bars are forced by law to close.
Which takes us back to the arrogance of power. If legislators like to smoke cigarettes in bars that stay open past 2 a.m., don't they think some of the rest of us might enjoy that as well? But just as it is with labor laws--from forcing unpaid overtime on staffers to hitting on them--our leaders feel above the laws they create.
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