Look at meeeeeee

Kyrsten Sinema was standing a few yards from the border wall with four Republican members of Congress. The men were staring balefully at a row of nearby portable toilets, wondering aloud if they could hold out for a proper bathroom on the way back to the airport. Sinema assured Representatives David Valadao of California and Tony Gonzales of Texas that they need not worry on her account.

“If you know anything about me,” she said, gesturing vaguely out into the desert, “you know that I’ll go anywhere.” The two men, who were just getting to know the Arizona senator, laughed. “I mean,” Sinema added as she pointed back to the porta-potties, “I come from humble beginnings. That there is some fancy [expletive].”

Valadao, Gonzales and the two other elected officials, Representative Juan Ciscomani of Arizona and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, all wore jeans and nondescript shirts. Sinema, dressed in a black Western shirt with a white yoke and black jeans with matching spectacles and cowboy boots, exercised her full array of Republican-charming skills throughout the morning. Standing at the wall, she had a detailed exchange with a Border Patrol official for the benefit of the visitors about how Mexican drug cartels managed to ferry fentanyl into Arizona and beyond. At a round-table discussion in the Cochise County sheriff’s office, she moderated a brisk dialogue between her congressional colleagues and beleaguered local officials whose once-quiet communities were now plagued by cartel associates. When the four Republicans responded with harsh criticisms of the Biden administration, Sinema nodded sympathetically, saying: “That’s right. That’s right.”

This NYT Magazine profile is 8,276 words long, but that’s as far as I got.

If anybody else wants to go further, I will thank you for your service.

Speaking of which, I was at an airport ticket counter last week, trying to straighten things out after my flight was delayed for six hours, and a young woman standing next to me was having how to use her status as active duty military explained to her by a ticket agent, as she had just joined the armed services, so this was new for her. The agent finished her explanation and then added, “thank you for your service.”

I was tempted to tell the agent that as a Fourth Responder, I thought it would be nice if I were thanked for my service as well, especially as my flight was six hours late now.

First responders: Everybody knows who these people are.

Second responders: Hospital personnel and other people involved in post-disaster triage etc.

Third responders: Politicians and other public officials who try to improve things for first and second responders in the future.

Fourth responders: Social commenters, who give the third responders valuable advice.

I explained this schema to my in-laws last fall, and they had a hat made for me emblazoned with the phrase FOURTH RESPONDER, where normally NRA FOREVER or what have you would go.

But I forgot to wear it on this trip so I decided not to make any Larry David-type comments.