Mr. Smarty Pants, cowed for months by his prominent placement on a serious editorial page, returns nonetheless to answer edgy, if totally fictitious, questions from equally imaginary readers in real, but cleverly alliterative, Colorado locales.
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
I see that Joel Hefley endorsed his longtime aide, Jeff Crank, in a crowded field of Republicans seeking to succeed the incredibly veteran 5th District congressman. Does this Crank fellow have a chance of being elected?
– Credulous in Cripple Creek
Dear Credulous:
One can only hope. Congress already has a Flake (Rep. Jeff Flake, D-Ariz.). It could use a Crank, too.
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
What is this Long Bill all the legislators are talking about? And who is this Long person?
– Confused in Conifer
Dear Confused:
The long bill is short for the long appropriations bill, which is the annual budget bill. This year the state budget is roughly $16.2 billion. The long bill started out at 680 pages but is likely to grow as amendments are added. Eerily, there is a picture of a Representative Long in the room where the House Democrats were holding their long bill caucus last week. The 1927 House class photograph includes Rep. Martha E. Long, who may be the only actual Long ever to introduce a bill in the Colorado legislature. Mr. Smarty Pants also hopes that one day the House will, at long last, have a Representative Sample.
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
Why is it that, when public officials are speaking at big events, they always introduce all the other public officials who are there? What makes them so all-fired important?
– Miffed in Minturn
Dear Miffed:
If they didn’t make a big deal about one another, who would?
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
So what’s the real story? Why didn’t John Hickenlooper run for governor?
– Dubious in Denver
Dear Dubious:
Mr. Smarty Pants suspects it was the headline issue. “Hickenlooper” is too long to fit in a big, splashy headline. One of the consequences of being governor, as the mayor himself noted, is that one makes big, splashy news – bigger news, and thus larger headline type, than the mayor. And who wants to be called “Hick” all the time? “Ike,” maybe, or “LBJ.” But Hick?
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
Well, I just went tingly all over when I saw that the freshman Democrats and Republicans were trying so hard to get along! In this age of “bowling alone,” they even went bowling together!! So who won the civility bowling match?
– Genteel in Genessee
Dear Genteel:
No one. “In the spirit of bipartisanship, we didn’t keep score,” explained one of the bowlers, Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs.
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
This legislature seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on frivolous issues like “dangerous dogs and malodorous hogs,” as Speaker Andrew Romanoff himself put it in one of his entertaining e-mails. What’s wrong with them?
– Annoyed in Antonito
Dear Annoyed:
You, as a voter, must accept some blame for their pitiful condition. You’ve taken away all of their taxing and much of their spending powers. They have to follow formulas for everything. You’ve told them they must leave after eight years. They have no institutional memory. They are reduced to focusing on frivol. Mr. Smarty Pants would not be surprised to see legislation addressing the problem of people yelling into cellphones, or commercials for expensive cars that say “lug-zury” but not “Leg-zus.”
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Dear Mr. Smarty Pants:
So where, exactly, have you been? We have missed your hallucinatory hagiography and supercilious cynicism. Have you been mired in the sloughs of despond? Or is it merely that you appear only when you don’t have time to turn out something with even the slightest semblance of substance?
– Suspicious in Swink
Dear Suspicious:
Yes and yes.
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
