Nancy Pelosi Wields Wooden-Spoon Justice of an Italian Grandmother.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — the first female Speaker in American History, and the first Italian-American female and grandmother to be the most politically powerful woman in the country — has given full-blown fits to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and all other aging, shallow, soulless, corrupt, white men in Washington.
Regardless of the issue — from Obamacare (which was pushed through by Pelosi and should bear her name), to Impeachment, to pointing her finger at the ManChild in the Cabinet Room and scolding him for having gangster friends, like the punk Putin, to schooling the dummy McCarthy on bipartisanship and how to wield power — these pathetic old patriarchs cannot fathom the inherent power and ferocious tenacity of this woman warrior.
It’s pretty simple, actually. She is a grounded Italian woman who has zero tolerance for lies, meanness, bluster, bullshit, or false patriots.
My mother was just such a woman warrior, and was Speaker of OUR house, not any other. Brilliant, but without any formal education, my mother had an innate skill to get to the heart of the matter. If you crossed her, you did so at your own peril.
Paralyzed in her right arm by Polio from when she was an infant, my mother enforced her word wielding a wooden spoon in her “good” left hand, when she wasn’t using it to cook.
My middle brother, Vincent — the most misogynistic, racist, Trumpian and troublesome of her four children — was frequently the target of my mother’s wrath. She used the wooden spoon on him regularly to drive home her displeasure with his anti-social actions.
Each blow she landed on him with the wooden spoon would come with the uttering of a powerful word of opprobrium: “If (spoon smash)…you…(spoon smash) ever…(spoon smash) do…(spoon smash) that…(spoon smash) again…(spoon smash)…” Well, you get the picture. If my brother talked back, (like Trump’s OCD tweeting) he simply prolonged his syllabic smashing.
Under today’s laws, my mother — a small, plump Italian woman, usually wearing a housedress — would be subject to charges of child abuse or endangerment. In the “old days” — which Trump was fond of recalling — it was merely considered spanking, something which neither the Rich Blonde Brat nor his corpulent sycophants ever experienced.
When we were kids, we simply knew not to cross my mother — especially her powerful left arm. She used the wooden spoon so frequently on my brother Vinny that she broke more than one by beating him on the back. Nevertheless, she persisted, and went out and bought an indestructible Iron Spoon, and the first weapon of mass destruction was born.
Trump and his wussy whiners — McConnell, McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson and other spoiled brats — act as if Pelosi were pummeling them with an “Iron Spoon,” when they call her “authoritarian.” She’s an Italian Grandmother, you bloated babies, she has inherent authority.
Neither moron-mimicking Kevin McCarthy, nor mumbling Mitch McConnell, nor the Whiner-in-Chief, were ever exposed to the full wrath of a tough Italian woman like Nancy Pelosi, or my mother.
McConnell, a polio survivor himself, who contracted the disease as a 2-year old, was cured thanks to the generosity of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later, the March of Dimes) and the life-saving treatment he received at FDR’s Warm Springs facility in Georgia. McConnell’s fight with Polio, like her own, might have endeared him to my mother — who worshipped FDR and saved her dimes for decades toward the discovery of a Polio vaccine — if the Kentucky ingrate hadn’t dissed the March of Dimes — an unpardonable sin — when he had the power, and the means, to pay back their kindness. ‘Vaffanculo” my mother would have said to the March-of-Dimes mooching Mitch. Those were her dimes.
As for Trump, he was instantly dead to my mother when she found out his father joined an Anti-Italian immigrant KKK rally, and that Trump’s WASPY coifed-mother, who complained about Italians not putting lids on their garbage cans, used to chauffer her spoiled Little Lord Fauntleroy to private school in her rose-colored Rolls Royce. Yes, she really did. Then, Mama Trump drove her Rolls Royce to all of the apartment buildings the Trumps owned in Brooklyn & Queens and sucked the quarters out of all the laundry machines. Yes, she really did.
I have thought of my mother and her wooden spoon-justice often over the past few years when Nancy Pelosi, herself a no-nonsense Italian grandmother, leaves these crapulent white men crapping in their pants.
First, she slammed a slithery, white male reporter who asked her if she “hated” Trump, stating that she didn’t “hate” anyone, since she was raised a Catholic, and her religion taught her not to hate. My mother’s less artful answer would have been, “ Look, you little bastard, I don’t hate the miserable son-of-a-bitch, but his mother should have used the wooden spoon on him.”
Secondly, when repeatedly pressed about when she would transmit the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, Pelosi pointedly responded, “When I’m ready.” When Kevin McCarthy moaned this week that the Special Congressional Committee to investigate the January 6 Terrorist Attack on the Capitol was not bi-partisan, Pelosi quickly pummeled him: “We have a bi-partisan quorum and will proceed.” And another no-nonsense woman, Republican Liz Cheney, underscored her point.
The first female Speaker’s flinty, feisty, don’t-mess-with-me responses sounded so much like what my mother would have said: “ When I’m good and god-damned ready.” “Futtata,” my mother would have spit out at them. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — the first female Speaker in American History, and the first Italian-American female to be the most politically powerful woman in the country — continues to give fits to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and all other aging, shallow, soulless, white men. Regardless of the issue — from Obamacare (which was pushed through by Pelosi and should bear her name), to Impeachment, to pointing her finger at the ManChild in the Cabinet Room and scolding him for having gangster friends, like the punk Putin — these pathetic old patriarchs cannot fathom the inherent power of this woman warrior.
I have thought of my mother and her wooden spoon-justice frequently over the past month when Nancy Pelosi, herself a no-nonsense Italian grandmother, let a few people have it. First, she slammed a slithery, white male reporter who asked her if she “hated” Trump, stating that she didn’t “hate” anyone, since she was raised a Catholic, and her religion taught her not to hate. My mother’s less artful answer would have been, “ Look, you little bastard, I don’t hate the miserable son-of-a-bitch, but his mother should have used the wooden spoon on him.”
Secondly, when repeatedly pressed about when she would transmit the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, Pelosi pointedly responded, “When I’m ready.” Her flinty, feisty, don’t-mess-with-me response sounded so much like what my mother would have said: “ When I’m good and god-damned ready.”
Speaker Pelosi’s retorts, while less earthy than my mother’s, had the same pulverizing effect on puffy, pasty, panting Donald, on mumbling Mitch, and cowering, cowardly Kevin — all of whom it was clear, had no experience with tough, Italian women wielding wooden spoons or words as swords, to teach decency.
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