Cinderella Story? Only if You're Lazy and Boring

Something very cute happened last Friday. While fleeing the non-existant threat on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lost her shoe! And it was pink! Later, in the most adorable photo op to hit town since George Clooney was here last, Representative Dave Reichert, the Republican congressman from Washington State, dropped to his knee in a gallant gesture as he returned the errant sling-back, which he had found in the evacuation confusion, to its rightful owner.

Let's see... a handsome gentleman returning a lost shoe to a damsel in distress. I know! Cinderella! It's the first thing that jumps into your mind, isn't it? It was also the first thing that occured to the Associated Press, who said, "It was a Cinderella story, Capitol-Hill-Style." This is in contrast to the Houston Chronicle, also AP subscribers, who claimed that "It was a Cinderella story, Capitol Hill style", boldly eliminating the hyphens. The Seattle Intelligencer called it "A political Cinderella story", while the Contra Costa Times cleverly referred to it as a "Cinderella story". OK, OK... we get it!

Well, I'm no fancy-pants journalist. I come from a background in art history. And let me tell you, if I had handed in a paper in college in which the central motif was a metaphor, and then I failed to substantiate, or even explore, that metaphor, I would have been given an 'F'.

Let's take a closer look at the Cinderella story: Dave Reichert plays Prince Charming. OK, stop. Dave Reichert is pretty worried right now. He's very worried about his connections to a man who appears in no fairy tales: Tom DeLay. This Seattle Times editorial headline says it all: "Stench of DeLay clings to two Washington congressmen". The web site houseofscandal.org describes it in a more strident, shrill manner:

Just how tangled up in Tom DeLay's
House of Scandal is Dave Reichert?

•Dave Reichert has taken $19,901 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. No surprise that Reichert voted with Tom DeLay 97% of the time between Jan. 3 2005 and March 31 2005.

Is this the kind of government-for-hire that working families deserve?

•Dave Reichert voted to weaken the ethics rules in a move that many say served only to protect Tom DeLay.

Does the integrity of the House mean so little that Dave Reichert would sacrifice it to defend Tom DeLay?

•When Democrats offered a solution to clean up the House by strengthening ethics rules, Dave Reichert voted to make sure it never even came to an up or down vote.

So, OK... Reichert doesn't really fit the Prince Charming role. And coming to the rescue of Nancy Pelosi in the role of Cinderella? I don't think so! Nancy is more often placed in the role of a kind of 'anti DeLay', both by her supporters and her detractors. More often portrayed by her fans as one of the few brave, outspoken souls in the party, and by her enemies as a vicious, partisan attack dog, a damsel in distress she is not.

So if Reichert isn't a gallant prince coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress who bears more than a little resemblence to the famed Runaway Bride (see picture above), then what's really going on? Simple: Reichert is kneeling in deference to Pelosi, acquiescing. He's saying, in effect, "OK, you've killed the King (this is DeLay's role). Please don't come after me next! I beg you! Here's your shoe back!"

Now, isn't that more entertaining than a fairy tale?