C'mon now. It can be said quickly and slowly, almost not pronoucing the 'm', sometimes with a head cocked toward the recipient and a knowing glance. It's a kind of coded demand to face facts and stop avoiding the issue.
I heard it more than once as Cummings excoriated, then tried to inspire, his fellow House members, both on the Oversight Committee and not, to extend themselves to get beyond the morass in which we've found ourselves. Cummings is from Maryland, a mid-South state with decidedly liberal tendencies (but split like many states into urban progressives and rural conservatives). He has been a staple in Congress for some time now. He is not young; I winced as I watched him walk to his seat as Chairperson before Michael Cohen told the country, among other things, that 45, his former boss and someone with whom he had been in many confidential conversations for ten years as his personal attorney, was a "racist, a con man, and a cheat."
Cohen and Cummings then had to endure the snipings of House Republican Oversight Committee members who insisted that first, they simply wouldn't participate in any actual investigatory inquiries, so as not to contribute to what may be the president's actual demise. During their questioning, which could have been done by one of them instead of all since they exhibited the same attitudes and lanes of operation, they kept emphasizing that:
- Cohen was convicted of lying to the same Congress (which he was);
- That he might be seeking a book contract when his term in prison is finished (which he admitted); and that
- The whole thing was a colossal waste of time (which it certainly was for them, since they had no interest in performing their duties under the Constitution, which was to discover whether any wrongdoing has been taking place).
Whatever that had to do with the price of tea in Sri Lanka, which is the kind of distraction they would have begged for and enjoyed.
The game should have been anticipated. We should have anticipated that the very smarmy Mark Meadows would have lowered himself and someone else to introduce to the committee a black appointee from the Department of Housing and Human Services (the Secretary of which is black, so why did he bother?) to demonstrate that, you bunch of sillies, the president can't possibly be a racist.
Never mind what Cohen testified about 45 saying that countries with black leaders were "shithole" countries; that that statement was made, he said pointedly, when Barack Obama was President; and that black people wouldn't be voting for him because "they're too stupid." No, no: Let's bring in Exhibit 2, okay (Exhibit 1 being the "Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire" poster hanging behind the committee)? Here. She's black. She works in a Cabinet department. See?
Yes, we see. And Rashida Tlaib called him out, unfortunately without bringing Cohen's quotes about 45 back into the discussion, such as: Oh, this is sufficient proof of his racial magnanimity? No tokenism here whatsoever, huh? How, then, can you possibly reconcile what he's said about black people? Or is it true that she won't be voting for him in 2020 because she's "too stupid"? Let's sit her down for a minute and ask her, okay?
A perfect place for some Democrat to have said to Meadows, a North Carolinian: C'mon now. Because, in one sense of the Southern phrase, it means: You know the truth like the rest of us do.
All this with a black man as Chairperson of the committee.
He brought it at the end of the day with an impassioned, impromptu speech, both jeremiad and balm. "I mean, c'mon now. Our president has told 8,718 false or misleading statements. Sounds like you [Cohen] got caught up in it."
C'mon now, the man said. This is ridiculous. It means that, too.
He went on. "C'mon, now. We have got to get back to normal." C'mon now: You know what I mean.
It will not be easy, this return to normal, and what constitutes normal won't be exactly what it was on November 7, 2016. But we've let something slip away from us, and it's up to more of us than we thought to retrieve enough of it to reclaim our place in the world and in the advance of history, of which we have taken great responsibility over the past century and a half.
Rep. Cummings wants to believe, too, what he also kept on saying: We're better than this. We really are. To which I would respond: I thought we were, too. Now we will see. There must be a reckoning. It must involve, in a sense, all of us.
C'mon now. Let's get at this.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
A perfect place for some Democrat to have said to Meadows, a North Carolinian: C'mon now. Because, in one sense of the Southern phrase, it means: You know the truth like the rest of us do.
All this with a black man as Chairperson of the committee.
He brought it at the end of the day with an impassioned, impromptu speech, both jeremiad and balm. "I mean, c'mon now. Our president has told 8,718 false or misleading statements. Sounds like you [Cohen] got caught up in it."
C'mon now, the man said. This is ridiculous. It means that, too.
He went on. "C'mon, now. We have got to get back to normal." C'mon now: You know what I mean.
It will not be easy, this return to normal, and what constitutes normal won't be exactly what it was on November 7, 2016. But we've let something slip away from us, and it's up to more of us than we thought to retrieve enough of it to reclaim our place in the world and in the advance of history, of which we have taken great responsibility over the past century and a half.
Rep. Cummings wants to believe, too, what he also kept on saying: We're better than this. We really are. To which I would respond: I thought we were, too. Now we will see. There must be a reckoning. It must involve, in a sense, all of us.
C'mon now. Let's get at this.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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