December 08, 2011 06:30 PM UTC

Those Classy Congressional Aides

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• by: Colorado Pols

A first-hand account from one Janalee Filer of Pueblo from the “sit-in” at congressional offices this week in Washington, DC (as reported by Allison Sherry of the Denver paper Tuesday), courtesy Crooks and Liars–were there any cameras on this exchange? As narrated, something of a Marie Antoinette moment in the hallway outside Rep. Scott Tipton’s offices:

I marched into Rep. Tipton’s office today and demanded a meeting. There is a crisis in Pueblo-and across the country-that requires leadership and commitment, and so far we have seen neither from our representative.

Rep. Tipton came and spoke with us for a few minutes in the lobby. When we asked him if he would vote to extend unemployment insurance, what I heard is that he is “pondering” it. I don’t understand how there is even a question about it!

One of his aides met with us in the lobby as well. When we asked him again about if Rep. Tipton would vote to extend the unemployment insurance, he told us he had to listen to both sides and then he told us a strange story. He heard about a disheveled guy going in for an interview and purposefully not getting hired just to get an unemployment check. [Pols emphasis] We all sat there for a minute in disbelief…

This visit actually opened my eyes to how Congress thinks-they live in a different reality. I didn’t expect to hear that they think of the unemployed as people just looking for a handout. It was shocking.

It’s funny, because this is the same meeting that Tipton’s spokesman Josh Green described to reporter Sherry as “pleasant,” making a big deal out of Tipton’s willingness to talk to them. After Green’s happy description of events and a call to the fascinatingly chic Compass Colorado for a little smack talk, Sherry apparently didn’t need to talk to the actual demonstrators–so she never heard the part about Tipton’s staffer insulting unemployed Americans everywhere.

Which is too bad, because that kind of seems like a story.