You just know what Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami was thinking when she hung up on President-elect Barack Obama. You know because she said so:
“I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me,” she said. “They’ve gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, ‘Oh, no, I won’t be punked’.”
(Her reference is to ‘Punk’d,’ a hidden-camera, practical jokes-on-celebrities TV show hosted by Ashton Kucher that ran on MTV.)
What Ros-Lehtinen really meant was that she wasn’t going to be “Palined.” Shortly before the election, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took a prank call from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
When informed of the prank, her campaign stated: “Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C’est la vie.”
She might have been a tad bit embarrassed too, hence Ros-Lehtinen’s reaction — no one was going to play “gotcha” politics with her.
She had reason to be suspicious, of course. Obama called to congratulate her on her re-election, and to say that he looked forward to working with her in her role as the most senior Republican on the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee. It does sound like the opening bit of one of those classic crank calls.
So Ros-Lehtinen hung up on Obama. And she hung up on Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who called back to persuade her to take the call.
It was only when Rep. Howard Berman, a fellow member of her committee, phoned her that she was persuaded the calls were real.
And so they finally connected (again), with Obama reportedly laughing and telling her “I don’t blame you for being skeptical.”
After having time to rethink why she hung up on him, we like Ros-Lehtinen revised answer: “I thought, ‘Why would Obama want to call a little slug on the planet like me?’”
Apparently that is an admission to being a little slow. Otherwise, when she thought she was being pranked, why didn’t Ros-Lehtinen challenge the alleged imitator with: “Say something eloquent, so I know it’s you.”
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