Nancy Pelosi may be the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the most powerful woman in the history of American politics, but she is stunningly bad at being a public figure in the digital age. Thankfully, her genius cats communicate so well for her on YouTube.
Even though she has been the leader of the Democratic House for a while, the only time Pelosi seems to shine is when she reflects poorly on her party and her people. Almost every time she opens her mouth, Pelosi creates controversy with dumb comments and dumber responses.
Her public speaking skills place her only slightly above Elmo from "Sesame Street." When chopped up into sound bites, a Pelosi speech plays like Elmo's vaguely demented grandma, who somehow was elected to Congress.
Today Pelosi is trying to dig her way out of a series of boneheaded comments about waterboarding and torture. Getting strapped to a board and almost drowning would be terrifying, but it has to be far more pleasant than having to listen to Pelosi stammer on about what she knew or when she knew it.
With all of this negativity and failure swirling around Speaker Pelosi, it is easy to overlook her profound impact on today's politics - the Capitol Cat Cam. Just type "Speaker Pelosi presents Capitol Cat Cam" into a YouTube search and behold the hidden brilliance of a woman who obviously speaks most effectively through her acting cats.
Pelosi, via the conduit of her two fuzzy kitties, is clearly combating the stagnant top-down flow of information and truth in our society with a clever and well-acted esoteric cat play.
The gray cat, in an obvious reference to the Greek goddess Themis, rubs its face on a gavel that has fallen underneath a chair. The cat must have known that by bumping the symbol of justice it would be tweaking the very notion of justice itself - whether or not true justice was even an achievement possible for our flawed human societies. Well, that or it had an itchy face.
Cut to the next scene, and this time the black cat is sitting next to an arrangement of flowers (an allegory of the perfection of nature - such a brilliant cat). The cat turns its head to the left, and then continues the turn and almost twists its head all the way around so that kitty is practically facing backward. Maybe the cat heard a noise and looked around. Dig a little deeper, though, and see the cat acknowledge how Pelosi veers left on the political spectrum and, in classic pantomime form, shows how a way forward is possible with an eye trained on our venerated past and the lessons of history.
The cats then both meet on a windowsill to gaze out onto the Washington Monument. They hold the pose in order to let the genius of their performance sink in. The video ends in a Rickroll, a nod to the obfuscating presence of the Internet in our everlasting search for the truth.
I can't wait to see how the cats will handle this latest controversy - I wonder if they even make waterboards in cat size.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears weekly.
