Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

My friends Sam and Gerry were by for a visit the other day. We made idle chitchat. Then, for whatever reason, Sam said: "Gerry, your socks don't match!" Gerry didn't miss a beat. "When you're rich as I am, you can do what you want." Gerry had recently come into an inheritance and was pleased to let others know. Still, I thought this was not a personal credo that builds character, but each to his own and all that.

Reflecting on this brief exchange somewhat later, I had a flashback. Who knows why? I recalled a newspaper interview with Barney Frank I had read shortly after Barney was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1980. It was largely a puff piece, presenting Barney to a larger public, and the questions were all cotton balls. One inquiry addressed Barney's philosophy about his attire. Frank had been around local Boston politics for many years before going off to DC; he was a highly visible advisor to Kevin White and then did a stretch in the Mass. State House as a rep from Beacon Hill. I knew him casually in these years and Barney was never known as a fashion plate. He was kind of roly-poly in those years and could look somewhat disheveled. In one reelection for the State House, Frank's campaign released a poster revealing a chubby Frank, looking as though he had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed, and the text read: "Neatness Doesn't Always Count." It was a very witty thing to do, but parents and teachers had a different take-- bad input for the tykes-- and it was withdrawn with the appropriate apology. (I should note that once Frank moved on to the nation's capital, he dropped weight, buffed up, and dressed much better. National spotlights can do that.)

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Anyway, in the fluffy interview, Barney acknowledged that a fashion sense was not his strongest suit, so to speak, and in order to avoid the mismatched sock situation (which, I suspect, had happened to him on previous occasions), he'd go out and buy several dozen of the exact same style of black sock and throw them in the drawer, and in the morning, while getting dressed, he'd scoop out two socks and never have to worry if they matched!

I have kept this vignette in my cortex for a quarter century! And why not? It's an interesting story, more than many that come out of Washington.

And we have to recall how Barney came to be elected to the US House from what is now the Fourth District. The person who held the seat before Barney was Father Robert Drinan, formerly dean of the Boston College Law School. Drinan was a solidly progressive vote in the House, even on issues like reproductive rights. The Father was also a Jesuit. 1979 was the year that saw three different rear ends warm the throne of Peter in Rome. Circulation of elites. One was there for only a month.

I sell a book in my bookstore, Murder in the Vatican, which makes the case that this Pontiff was done-in due to his history of progressive viewpoints (progressive for his time). I was certain he would be a goner after he, when queried about his favorite writer, named Mark Twain, who wrote so penetratingly on religion, most notable Christian Science (Twain's is a still-fabulous book today, if you can find a copy.)

At any rate, the final cattle-call of 1979 in the Vatican gave us the late Polish prelate, who immediately brought his hammer to the faithful. Since some of the priests and even bishops weren't on his message, and some had even been elected to their national assemblies with an agenda not favored by the new Pope, he ordered priests in elected office to immediately cease and desist. The Chamber of Deputies in Italy was the first purged of progressive clergy. But the wave washed over Father Drinan as well, and he stood down. Thus happened that rare event in Massachusetts politics-- An Open Congressional Seat!

In 1980, a swarm of pols declared, Barney among them. There were famous names in the race-- a Roosevelt, I think and others. Barney is from a modest background; his family is from New Jersey. He and his sister, Ann Lewis (formerly Ann Frank), have done well. People who like Barney like him a lot. And his constituents like him a lot and the word spread to others in his prospective constituency. Massachusetts needs hardy types. Frank won the primary and then the general election and has served in the US Congress for 25 years. There was some hope, back when Tip O'Neill was Speaker, that Barney might one day take the gavel of the House, as had Barney's predecessor several-times-removed in the Fourth, Rep. Joe Martin, a Republican. But Barney's chances of being Speaker seem dim, especially with the ascendancy of types like Tom DeLay, who once referred to the Gentleman from Massachusetts as "Barney Fag," his kind's idea of what?

I appreciated Frank's instruction on socks. Now back to Gerry, whose mis-matched socks had triggered this meditation: well, Gerry had come to peruse the Foot Fraternity catalogue of DVDs, wherein a gentleman from Cleveland, who has been dedicated to his art for years, hires young men to put on uniforms and then (our comrade from Cleveland often stars in his own works) the shoes or boots are removed, and we witness some loving engagement of the human foot, often with socks! And, to be fair, naked feet too! I had to recall that the gentleman in Rome has an annual occasion to wash a pair of unshod feet, a photo of which is made available to the world. The guy in Cleveland does it better.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com