All Other Problems Solved, a Mass. Politician Tackles Our 'General Hooker' Sign Issue
Source – Every day, hundreds of workers and visitors walk into the State House through a set of doors labeled the “General Hooker Entrance” in large letters. It’s one of two public entrances to the State House, located by the large statue of Gen. Joseph Hooker, a son of Hadley, riding on a horse. …
As hundreds of students poured through that entrance Wednesday, Rep. Michelle DuBois raised the issue of the entrance name’s double meaning on social media. …
“I would like to have the general’s first name included on the sign so there is not an overt double meaning and double entendres on the sign,” she told the News Service Thursday. “I think that’s the most practical and fastest solution to the problem.”
Well thank God somebody finally has the guts to speak up and take a stand on this, the most compelling and divisive issue of these dark times in which we live. A lot of people shit on Massachusetts politicians as corrupt kleptocrats, interested only in building their political machines by giving out state jobs to their cronies and relatives and not doing any actual governing. But not Rep. Michelle DuBois. She’s leading from the front. Rolling up her sleeves and wading straight into the fire on the hot button issue of a sign people make cheap jokes about.
For the record, a State Rep in Mass gets paid $78,000. As a base salary. But in addition they get paid extra to sit on committees, which each and every one of them is. And they get paid a per diem for driving into the State House every day based on how far away their district is. The kicker on that is they get paid it whether or not they actually drove to work on a given day. And they’ve voted themselves in an automatic regular pay increase that they get regardless of how bad the economic situation is due to them running businesses out of the state.
Though what do we get for that? Someone with the courage to speak out against double entendres. A public figure who’s willing to stand beside the victims of a dead historical figure’s silly name. A true leader who refuses to shirk her responsibility to connect a goofy joke on a sign to rape, harassment and the dignity of women. Because by the way Rep. DuBois sees it, an old dead general’s name on a sign might as well say “Smelly Pirate Hookers Enter Here and Go Back to Your Home on Whore Island,” which makes her mad as hell and she is not going to take it any more. And you can’t put a price on that.