Filibuster Until the Doctor Gets Here

If you string letters together, you generally get words that actually make sense. With exceptions such as “krzglqurx,” of course. If you then string actual words together, you generally get sentences. But here, too, there are exceptions that prove the rule, such as “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” Several connected sentences directed toward an audience can be called a speech. If the speech is lengthy — long and getting longer — it’s called an oration. It may be more or less interesting, but it’s often boring to the point where your eyes begin glazing over. An oration should have a subject that makes sense, perhaps even have a message or an opinion, and it should be based in logic. But exceptions are common, like the ones we hear in the German Parliament, for example, or the infamous, endless speeches delivered by Fidel Castro.

Such speeches — devoid of any sense whatsoever — aren’t the exception in the U.S. Senate. When they become the norm, they’re called “a filibuster.” Here in the German-speaking world, it would be called “chewing someone’s ears off” or “gibbering.” But here, we can try putting a stop to a filibuster with a surprise question like, “Do you have your own hairdresser?”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul wouldn’t have been put off by such a question. He announced right from the start that he intended to speak until he was unable to continue talking. That point came at 12:40 Wednesday morning after Paul had been speaking constantly for 12 hours and 51 minutes. He did so because he was allowed to speak as long as he wished in opposition to the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director, and he wished to make it clear to President Obama that he objected to the use of drone attacks against Americans on U.S. soil — a very moderate position, by the way, for a Republican hawk. Paul didn’t need a point to his speech or a goal in mind. One may filibuster by reading from the telephone directory. In 1935, for example, Sen. Huey Long read out a recipe for southern fried oysters that lasted 15 hours.

But the undisputed king of filibusters remains Sen. Strom Thurmond, who supported racial segregation for 24 hours and 18 minutes on the Senate floor in 1957. The only rule for those suffering from this verbal diarrhea is that they may not sit down nor are they allowed to leave the room. For that eventuality, Strom Thurmond had a bucket placed in a room adjoining the Senate chamber allowing him to periodically urinate and still keep one foot on the Senate floor.

Some Americans, it seems, have literally never evolved beyond the “Me Tarzan, you Jane” stage.