My Missed Connection: Senator Charles Schumer

My toddler daughter was sick with a viral eye infection of some kind, so our little family was apartment-bound for the weekend, which didn’t matter much because it was so cold and windy here in NYC. But yesterday, I managed to sneak out because I really needed a haircut.

As I walked to my regular hair cutting joint on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, I noticed barriers blocking cross streets from the Avenue, and a bunch of cops standing on the corners. Obviously, something was afoot.

I asked an NYPD cop, “What’s going on today?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s the Irish,” she said. “St. Patrick’s Day parade or something.”

Although I’m, half-Irish (and proud of it), the thought of taking in a parade alone wasn’t so appealing. So I continued on my way to the barber.

When I got to the shop, which is right on Seventh Ave. with plate glass windows facing the street, I had to wait for my regular hair stylist. By this time, the parade was beginning to get underway just outside.

I watched some police cars, a few fire engines, and some bag pipers go by. A few school bands clanged past. Then, I saw mayor Bloomberg, with his retinue.

This is some parade, I thought. At this moment, the girl who washes hair at the shop came and told me to follow her back to the sinks. I rose from my chair.

But then, outside, suddenly, came Senator Charles Schumer. Unlike the other pols in the Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day Parade, he was alone in the parade, with an aide traipsing behind. Smiling, walking, smiling. Here was a man I wanted to talk to.

Just that morning, I had heard Schumer on TV explaining that (American hero) Russ Feingold’s resolution to censure George Bush for illegally wiretapping Americans without court warrants was “premature” or something. Basically, Schumer is scared to tell King George “no” when he does illegal things.

But, now, here was Schumer. Waving to the Park Slope moms and dads, giving thumbs up to everyone. Basically, acting like a mensch pol from Brooklyn. But he’s no mensch – he’s selling out our rights to a creeping dictatorship!

Anyway, he was gone before I could say a word, or somehow emerge from the barbershop to come onto the Avenue and confront him.

“Senator, as your constituent, I want you to know that your failure to support Russ Feingold’s censure resolution makes you impossible to vote for ever again. I’ll put it up there with your support of this Iraq War and your vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act as indelible black marks against you, your party, and your office itself. Please never again come into my neighborhood and wave at me, while back in Washington you’re stabbing my neighbors and me in the back by playing footsie with Bush and his anti-American agenda. Now, please get on board with Feingold!”

That is what I wanted him to know. That is what I wanted to tell Schumer as he went by grinning, sucking, losing, doing nothing, failing utterly.

But I didn’t have the chance.