U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., surely became a household name across the land Wednesday night, though perhaps not in a way he'd prefer. He apologized for shouting "You lie!" at President Obama during the president's speech on health care reform in the U.S. House chamber at the Capitol.
Evidently Republicans and Democrats scalded Wilson with criticism of his town-hall style retort to the president in an institution where opposition-party lawmakers usually sit in deafening silence when they hear something from the presidential lips that they don't like.
Perhaps Wilson's outburst will prompt the leaders of the N.C. state Senate to think about a temporary interbasin transfer of an odd legislative award, from the Upper Neuse Basin in Raleigh to the Potomac Basin in Washington where Wilson works when he's not down home.
In Raleigh, Senate leaders sometimes present the "Ox Meter" -- a funny looking gizmo mounted on a wooden plaque, with chrome or stainless steel piping and big glass-front meter -- to a legislator who had just said something dumb. Or clueless. Or exceedingly long without much of a point. Or just plain outlandish.
Sen. A.B. Swindell, D-Nash, got the Ox Meter a few years ago for a long story he told about his mother's potato biscuits and the way she used to sew him into his flannel shirts before school every day.
The Ox Meter used to repose from time to time on the desk of former state Sen. Fountain Odom, D-Mecklenburg, who had a string of stories to tell about, and sometimes on, his colleagues and other folks in the leadership. Other senators have enjoyed, if that is the right word, possession of the Ox Meter from time to time.
Why is it called an Ox Meter? Dunno, exactly. Some think it's because the trophy is awarded to a particularly bull-headed lawmaker who likes to hear the sound of his own bellowing.
Others subscribe to the theory that "Ox" refers not to the animal but to the malodorous effluent the animal sometimes leaves behind.
Others think it refers to the old cliché about "dumb as an ox."
I don't know which of those accounts for the name. But it sure looks like the Ox Meter would be appropriate for the gentleman from South Carolina.
