Spoken

Inside every cynic is a softie.  I'd like to think that after the Pope's address to Congress and some kind of Ebenezer Scrooge experience, John Boehner woke up clutching his bedpost and resolved to spend the rest of his life digging wells for African villages.  But I don't think so.  I'm not sure Dickens believed in personal transformation even as he was writing.  In the real world, Scrooge replaced Bob Cratchit with a twelve-year-old who did his job for three shillings a week, and Boehner will be back in Washington lobbying for the tobacco industry before the construction frame comes off the Capitol.  And weeping.