Any Speaker of the House who tells the American people “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” is not worth taking seriously about anything, and certainly, in a sane locale, would not be given any sort of honor at all.
My first thought on her bs.
I guess Baltimore can be overlooked because they named a street after her when she became the first female speaker, before she showed her true idiocy.
Now I hate to tell such a plain truth, but I must — the bulk of San Francisco’s liberality seems sometimes actuated by a love of applause. She don’t always take kindly to a good deed for a good deed’s sake, but pat her on the head, and flatter her, and say Bully, bully, bully, is the great Metropolis of the Pacific, and she will break her neck trying to accomplish that good deed. You get Dr. Bellows to glorify her princely liberality in ten telegraphic sentences, at forty cents a word, and down they come with $20,000 for the Sanitary Fund! They always respond when ‘Glory’ calls but they are sometimes slow to respond when they are not going to be applauded.
- quoted in “False to Thee,” San Francisco Daily Dramatic Chronicle, 16 January 1866, p. 2. (”Mark Twain”).
San Francisco liberals often “do it for the glory” of being applauded, but seldom try to help you, or any other human being, otherwise. Indeed, it can be a very cold, unwelcoming city despite all its “liberal” pretenses.