A firm tsk-tsk

Don't be fooled by that unbreakable smile or the weak little fist she likes to shake around - Nancy Pelosi's a tough cookie. It's campaign season, and she said this to Wolf Blitzer yesterday during a half-hour interview about Congress's approval ratings, offshore drilling and the war.



Nicely put. I especially like the bit at the end: "He needs something to talk about because he has no ideas." True on many levels.

But leave it to the media to make Pelosi sound like weak, whiny nag, all for the sake of a nice-sounding verb. A recap by Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman ran on CNN, Yahoo News, in the Washington Times and about a million other places.

(Asked to respond to the video of Bush), Pelosi shot back in unusually personal terms.

"You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for "challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again."

"Tsk-tsked?" Really? Tell me, Laurie Kellman, if it had been Ted Kennedy or Chris Dodd calling the president "a total failure" on national TV, do you think you would have chosen "tsk-tsk"? Something tells me you would have gone with "slamming" or "lambasting," something serious and brawny. And "unusually personal terms"? What's that about? She wasn't making fun of Bush's gay son over a game of canasta, for Christ's sake.

Things make me mad. Here are more things that make me mad.