Back to Joe

When something terrible happens, on a grand scale, there is always a rush to comment on on it. I tend not to, because I doubt the people involved give two hoots what I think and would rather, since I can't be of any immediate help, that I went about my business and left them alone.

It reminds me a little of a quote in Buzz Bissinger's "A Prayer for the City," attributed to Ed Rendell: "I only deal with things I can control. Everything else I watch on television."

So, back to Joe.

Here are the list of topics his website has to be voted on this week:

"Issue of the Week" 7/5/05:
Supreme Court Vacancy
Pennsylvania Budget
Valerie Plame, CIA Leak, Source Confidentiality
G8 Summit

Since I gave the Rendell quote above, let me also provide one of my favorite Hoeffel quotes. It is a little dated, and in a time when legislators call each other faggots and crackers in the PA house and senate chambers, it is almost quaint, but here you go, from the Inky, Sept. 19, 1996.

The struggle for Montgomery County's congressional seat, one of the more widely watched House elections in the country, has taken a turn toward meanness.

First, on Tuesday, came a comment from Jan Friis, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Jon D. Fox, that Fox's Democratic challenger, Joseph M. Hoeffel 3d, ought to stop complaining that his record was being misrepresented. ``Screw him,'' Friis said. ``Tell him to go to hell.''

Yesterday, seizing on that remark, Hoeffel began a day of tit-for-tat by saying at a news conference in Norristown: ``I pray that I won't go to hell, but I know that I'm going to Congress.''

Some days it seems like you can't have the one without the other [sigh]