Her politics were never franksolich's politics, but she's admirable anyway, definitely not an affirmative-action politician; she grew up knowing what it's like, being of African derivation in America.
You know, even though Shirley Chisholm's politics sucked rotten eggs and her persecution of Richard Nixon verged on the irrational, I always thought she was probably a nice person to know.....as a person.
She was first elected to the House sometime when Nixon was president, and franksolich was still a kid, although a literate one by then.
The Democrat leadership in the House named her to the Agriculture Committee, at which she balked, pointing out that she was from innermost New York City, and knew nothing about farming.
The plantation owners then transferred her to the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, and she was happy with that.
From 1500 miles away, out in the Sandhills of Nebraska, a boy then wrote her a letter. Okay, so she didn't want to be on the agricultural committee because she wasn't a farmer, but how come she was willing to be on the veterans' committee even though she wasn't a veteran?
Not being able to help myself, I was impeccably polite in writing her, acknowledging that I wasn't a constituent of hers, but I'd really like an answer.
Now, one can usually discern if a congressional response is written (or more usually, dictated) by the representative, or if it was simply an aide's response; the tone's different, and noticeable.
The letter I got back from Shirley had
obviously been dictated by her, personally.
She pointed out that, true, she wasn't a veteran, but she had lots and lots of veterans as constituents, while she didn't know of any constituents who were farmers.
Okay, reasonable.
Then she assured me I was a nice kid, probably one of the nicest kids one could ever hope to meet.
That's something for the primitives on Skins's island to keep in mind, especially MrsCorpio and the bravenak primitive.
<<<was called a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet, by Shirley Chisholm (D-New York).