You’ll want to read Marcy’s post about Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on politicization of the Department of Justice.
One thing that continues to bother the hell out of me: Republican Rep. Jim Jordan’s clown-y assholishness. It’s now his brand. He’s the GOP caucus’s id — the Goofus-looking, tantrum-throwing, jacket-avoiding persona happily adopted by the right-wing as a model for their party.
He’s a creepy bad clown whose running gags and interstitial bits aren’t funny or amusing; they’re meant to harass, ridicule, and obstruct Congress’s little-d democratic processes.
While he was repeatedly offered other GOP members’ time during the hearing to question the witnesses called before the committee, he made a point of not wearing his mask and yelling at the same time.
(Aside: there’s a paper waiting to be written about clowns who refuse to wear masks.)
He attended the rally in Tulsa this past weekend and like nearly everyone else in that venue in attendance, didn’t wear a mask and is now potentially an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19.
With this routine Jordan didn’t respect the well being of his fellow members of Congress. He showed he’s willing to hurt other members of Congress for his personal and partisan political aims.
Just scroll through the hearing video beginning with his opening remarks at 9:26 —
Perhaps Jordan was chosen as HJC ranking member to do all the heavy lifting for the GOP side of the committee exactly because he yells during his tantrums, attracting media’s attention thereby starving Democrats of oxygen for their side.
While his outbursts have been annoying in the past, this time Jordan forcefully pushed aerosolized exhalation through the hearing room Wednesday after being in proximity with others exposed to COVID-19 with Team Trump in Tulsa. He may have deliberately blown biological material around the hearing room, like so:
OH-4 is also not as heavily impacted by COVID-19 as other more urban congressional districts in Ohio.
The counties in his district are Allen, Auglaize, Champaign, Crawford, Logan, Sandusky, Seneca, Shelby and Union counties and parts of Erie, Huron, Lorain, Marion, and Mercer counties. Check them against the most recent COVID-19 data for the state of Ohio:
| County | Confirmed | Deaths | Cases per 1M people | Recovered |
| Ohio – total | 47651 | 2772 | 4127 | No data |
| Adams County | 20 | 1 | 703 | No data |
| Allen County† | 261 | 38 | 2460 | No data |
| Ashland County | 46 | 0 | 865 | No data |
| Ashtabula County | 413 | 42 | 4075 | No data |
| Athens County | 29 | 1 | 448 | No data |
| Auglaize County† | 93 | 3 | 2029 | No data |
| Belmont County | 516 | 21 | 7356 | No data |
| Brown County | 50 | 1 | 1119 | No data |
| Butler County | 1301 | 41 | 3516 | No data |
| Carroll County | 46 | 3 | 1598 | No data |
| Champaign County† | 37 | 1 | 930 | No data |
| Clark County | 703 | 8 | 5106 | No data |
| Clermont County | 300 | 6 | 1506 | No data |
| Clinton County | 55 | 0 | 1312 | No data |
| Columbiana County | 1033 | 59 | 9603 | No data |
| Coshocton County | 64 | 0 | 1732 | No data |
| Crawford County† | 126 | 5 | 2904 | No data |
| Cuyahoga County | 6111 | 346 | 4811 | No data |
| Darke County | 230 | 25 | 4355 | No data |
| Defiance County | 43 | 3 | 1106 | No data |
| Delaware County | 449 | 15 | 2518 | No data |
| Erie County* | 221 | 22 | 2879 | No data |
| Fairfield County | 438 | 15 | 2978 | No data |
| Fayette County | 45 | 0 | 1553 | No data |
| Franklin County | 8310 | 378 | 6311 | No data |
| Fulton County | 54 | 0 | 1270 | No data |
| Gallia County | 9 | 1 | 291 | No data |
| Geauga County | 372 | 41 | 3990 | No data |
| Greene County | 187 | 9 | 1148 | No data |
| Guernsey County | 49 | 3 | 1227 | No data |
| Hamilton County | 4337 | 191 | 5419 | No data |
| Hancock County | 68 | 1 | 906 | No data |
| Hardin County | 108 | 11 | 3373 | No data |
| Harrison County | 12 | 1 | 757 | No data |
| Henry County | 23 | 0 | 820 | No data |
| Highland County | 39 | 1 | 898 | No data |
| Hocking County | 75 | 7 | 2552 | No data |
| Holmes County | 169 | 3 | 3954 | No data |
| Huron County‡ | 144 | 1 | 2420 | No data |
| Jackson County | 17 | 0 | 512 | No data |
| Jefferson County | 75 | 2 | 1090 | No data |
| Knox County | 36 | 1 | 588 | No data |
| Lake County | 390 | 17 | 1697 | No data |
| Lawrence County | 55 | 0 | 880 | No data |
| Licking County | 351 | 11 | 2099 | No data |
| Logan County† | 51 | 0 | 1116 | No data |
| Lorain County | 889 | 67 | 2947 | No data |
| Lucas County | 2534 | 299 | 5759 | No data |
| Madison County | 179 | 8 | 4124 | No data |
| Mahoning County | 1682 | 227 | 7089 | No data |
| Marion County‡ | 2717 | 36 | 41035 | No data |
| Medina County | 441 | 31 | 2545 | No data |
| Meigs County | 10 | 0 | 422 | No data |
| Mercer County‡ | 259 | 8 | 6342 | No data |
| Miami County | 413 | 30 | 4015 | No data |
| Monroe County | 83 | 16 | 5691 | No data |
| Montgomery County | 1465 | 22 | 2725 | No data |
| Morgan County | 6 | 0 | 399 | No data |
| Morrow County | 111 | 1 | 3185 | No data |
| Muskingum County | 71 | 1 | 823 | No data |
| Noble County | 6 | 0 | 408 | No data |
| Ottawa County | 124 | 23 | 2995 | No data |
| Paulding County | 22 | 0 | 1133 | No data |
| Perry County | 26 | 1 | 716 | No data |
| Pickaway County | 2150 | 41 | 38400 | No data |
| Pike County | 19 | 0 | 664 | No data |
| Portage County | 382 | 58 | 2364 | No data |
| Preble County | 55 | 1 | 1307 | No data |
| Putnam County | 107 | 15 | 3120 | No data |
| Richland County | 296 | 4 | 2397 | No data |
| Ross County | 89 | 2 | 1137 | No data |
| Sandusky County* | 112 | 13 | 1844 | No data |
| Scioto County | 28 | 0 | 353 | No data |
| Seneca County† | 31 | 2 | 549 | No data |
| Shelby County† | 55 | 4 | 1115 | No data |
| Stark County | 977 | 107 | 2605 | No data |
| Summit County | 1839 | 202 | 3407 | No data |
| Trumbull County | 771 | 57 | 3684 | No data |
| Tuscarawas County | 454 | 10 | 4908 | No data |
| Union County† | 73 | 1 | 1384 | No data |
| Van Wert County | 20 | 0 | 699 | No data |
| Vinton County | 22 | 2 | 1646 | No data |
| Warren County | 649 | 20 | 3020 | No data |
| Washington County | 120 | 20 | 1943 | No data |
| Wayne County | 343 | 52 | 2993 | No data |
| Williams County | 60 | 1 | 1596 | No data |
| Wood County | 345 | 51 | 2730 | No data |
| Wyandot County | 55 | 4 | 2424 | No data |
| Key: | ||||
| † = District OH-11 | ||||
| ‡ = County split with OH-11 | ||||
| * = Pivot county |
Based on the data above provided by The New York Times updated yesterday, there have been only 134 deaths in the counties which make up the Ohio 4th Congressional District, even with the hot spot at the prison in Marion, Ohio.
Note, too, that Jordan’s district OH-4 is more than 90% white, unlike nearby OH-9 (Rep. Marcy Kaptur) or OH-11 (Rep. Marcia Fudge), with a higher per capita income.
Compare to Cuyahoga County which makes up part of OH-9 — it’s had at least 346 COVID-19 deaths.
All of which means that Jordan’s career is relatively unaffected by COVID-19. He can be casually racist by ignoring the number of Black and other non-white deaths in Marion’s prison facility because the rest of his district won’t feel the pain of their loss — the mostly-minority incarcerated are disposable to white rural conservatives.
He can be deliberately threatening to Democrats in Congress because it’s encouraged by the White House.
Jordan won’t worry about anybody else getting COVID-19 because he can continue to be nothing more complicated than a loud, irritating clown and still earn his party’s support.
He’ll even get backup from other clowns in his party like Louis Gohmert banging on the desk during the course of the hearing to obstruct witness testimony — neither being sly Harlequins but an evil clown with a village idiot sidekick.
Not merely an evil clown, either, if Jordan intended to threaten and hurt other members of Congress.
Jim Jordan, killer clown — an existential threat to members of Congress who have to put up with him while they represent the rest of us.
This is an open thread.