OH, BEHAVE.(Congressman James Traficant's final floor statements)(Brief Article)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 05-AUG-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Last Thursday, when the phone rang in the Washington office of the by then former Congressman James Traficant, the only greeting was a singsong intern's voice saying, "Seventeenth District of Ohio." The Congressman's name and title had been banished from both phone and door, along with the Congressman himself, following his conviction on ten felony counts of bribery, tax evasion, and racketeering, and, subsequently, his solemn expulsion from the House by his peers. But, try as his colleagues might to forget him, a few die-hard fans of adolescent antics, polyester suits, and shag hairdos were still savoring Traficant as Capitol Hill's answer to Austin Powers.

"I'll miss him, I really will," said Tony Blankley, the editorial-page editor of the Washington Times, who once served as the spokesman...

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