Some days, music lovers in Minnesota's Seventh Congressional district can't be blamed if they don't get out of bed in the morning.
This is one of them.
In the Star Tribune's Hot Dish blog, Jeremy Herb reports in Peterson rocks at portrait presentation:
Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Tuesday night, Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson struck a few hot licks on his electric guitar ahead of a potential government shutdown. . . .
Finally, it was time to rock and roll with The Second Amendments, Peterson’s band. In the spirit of collegiality, the players included the cowboy-booted, neatly coiffed Peterson, a blue dog Democrat, on guitar and vocals, conservative Michigan Republican Rep. Thad McCotter on guitar, Tennessee freshman Republican Rep. Steve Fincher on bass and former Missouri Republican Rep. Kenny Hulshof on drums and vocals.
The set list included everything from Del Shannon to the Eagles as House Minority whip Steny Hoyer, among others, swayed to the tunes.
But it was hard to escape politics or the farm bills hammered out in the committee room in the shadow of the Capitol. As the band wrapped up a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” Hulshof asked Peterson, “Brown sugar, does that get a government subsidy?”
The jokes are bad enough, and there were tears from the current speaker:
Here stood John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House locked in mortal combat with Democrats over the federal budget, praising Peterson, and, of course, weeping over Peterson’s devotion to family as Peterson’s kids and grandkids looked on.
Peterson is divorced, so perhaps those are tears of envy. Or maybe the Speaker's real problem was the music itself. Lord have mercy. This is an offense to creation (and the Strib video is one of the better performances of the Second Amendments).
Not that the Republican Party will be offering me a better alternative. Unfortunately, Lee Byberg, another aspiring songbird, is challenging Peterson a second time. And Byberg writes his own material. I didn't spend years at the Ozarks Famous Writers school reading Saintsbury and studying formal verse at the feet of Lucinda Williams' daddy and hanging at bookshows in the Opryland convention center with Tom T. Hall with to have to put up with this.
I'm beginning to think my only hope is relocation--or redistricting. McLeod County sits on the edge of the Seventh; before 2002, we were part of the old Second. And for awhile, when Republican band members were retired by voters, the Second Amendments were no more. No longer.
Is it too much to ask those working on redistricting to shuffle us back into the Second? Or, please, Minnesota's Sixth. Sure, Kline is a conservative Republican and Bachmann, Queen of the Tea Party. But Peterson's Blue Dog yodeling with the Second Amendments?
It's enough to make me shoot my laptop--the ultimate post-modern Second Amendments solution--or just praise Al Gore for inventing the pause button on media players when he dreamt up the innertubes.
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