by George E. Curry
NNPA Columnist
Originally posted 12/28/2010
Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner is shedding so many tears in public that some are calling him the Weeper of the House. The Ohio Republican cries at every turn. There’s video of him crying on the House floor in 2007 when discussing the plight of soldiers being deployed to Iraq.
There’s another video of him crying on June 4, 2009 at the unveiling of a Ronald Reagan statue in the capitol. Last May, he cried when he accepted the pro-life Hyde Award. And, after he was re-elected to Congress in November, Boehner, the second-oldest of 12 children, started tearing up while recalling his hardscrabble upbringing in Reading, Ohio, a factory town just outside Cincinnati.
“Listen, I hold these values dear because I’ve lived them,” he said at the time. “I spent my whole life chasing… the American dream.” Then, the tears began flowing.
An appearance December 12 on CBS News’ 60 Minutes also featured waterworks. Leslie Stahl asked, “On election night, what made you sad, what – what got to you that night?”
With tears in his eyes, Boehner replied, “I was talking, trying to talk about the fact that I’ve been chasing the American Dream my whole career. There’s some – some things that are real – very difficult to talk about – family, kids, I can’t go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. And, you see all these little kids running around. Can’t talk about it.”
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