Look at this sh**!

November 1, 2024

What made this sculpture of a doo-doo on Nancy Pelosi’s desk so controversial? Did it remind us the unacceptable behavior of the Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 who wanted to overthrow the government, or was there more to it? Those who saw it argued there was something sinister about it, looking at it as a piece of art some four years after the event that it claims to commemorate but in a critical manner. To be fair, Nancy Pelosi defecated on her own desk often enough like any good neoliberal and long before an insurrectionist literally did so. As the longest serving house speaker in history, Pelosi is known to be the most vilified, but that doesn’t mean there is no substance to the vilification she receives. The accusations of engaging in insider trading, preventing the impeachment of George Bush Jr for lying to the Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, helping and trying to derail the candidacy of anyone (including Obama) who stood up against the Clinton empire, and coming too little too late to the defining protest movements like Me Too and the Black Lives Matter shows Pelosi was always one of those center right democrats who eventually allowed a person like Trump to seize power. Especially so during the later years of her service, when she became one of the chief enemies of the progressives and personally killed the Green New Deal. Nowadays she is busy calling pro-Palestinian activist Russian propaganda implants, touring to promote her book and defending her legacy, and defending Biden’s horrific policy of genocide in Gaza. Thanks to her, we now have a president who has done nothing to curb the fossil fuel industry’s hold on our future, who thinks fracking is a fact of life and sending billions to an apartheid regime that openly commits genocide is ok.

If every once in a while you find yourself agreeing with a Trump supporter that our politicians have became corrupt, on both sides of the isle, it is because people like Nancy Pelosi spent a life time insisting on centrism. One way or the another, we all do the thing that no one else can do for us. But doing it in public, in public office, in front of everyone is a big non-no. Especially if you don’t know how to clean after yourself.

Image by Allison Robbert for The Washington Post (cropped)

Image by Kevin Dietsch, Getty Images (cropped)