"I Am The Senator, You Are The Citizen. You Need To Be Quiet."

Actually, SENATOR Tommy Tucker, it's the other way around.

You are a public servant.  I understand that your election has been thoroughly bought and paid for by the corporate interests that actually run what we still call the voting process.  So you might feel entitled to a little arrogance.  After all, that's why the people who bought and paid for you spent so much of their not-hard-earned dollars doing so.  And it's what those people expect you to deliver.

There remains, however, the fact that you got voted in, under a constitutional system that makes YOU the employee of the people of North Carolina.  ALL of them, not just the ones who bought and paid for you to be called "Senator."  It's THEIR tax dollars that are funding your ability to hold that title.

And if you and your Republican colleagues are so understandably insecure enough that the only response you have to reasoned, legitimate opposition is to flood the marketplace of ideas with shut-up rhetoric, you needed worry about losing, because you've already lost.

However, it's worth it for those of us in the reasoned, legitimate opposition to take a moment or two and reflect on the mind-blowing hypocrisy embedded in SENATOR Tucker's words.

This comes from the party that denounced Barbara Boxer for asking to be addressed as "Senator," rather than as "Ma'am."  (For the record, Senator Boxer did not run to serve as a Ma'am.)

This comes from the party that feels so little courage in attacking Barack Obama that they have to attack his family, and their vacations, in a desperate attempt to gain a level of traction they do not deserve.

This comes from a party that (apologies to Larry Gelbart again) wears sincerity on both of its faces.

YOU, SENATOR, need to spend some serious time dining on nothing but silence, and washing it down with a lot of learn-to-listen.  Until then, you can have the title, but without the respect.