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Jason Chaffetz, congressman from Utah and chairman of the highly visible House Oversight Committee, had two big chances last week to make for up his disastrous performance in last year's botched attack on Planned Parenthood.
The fact that neither of them worked out very well was not entirely his fault. It is just the way political theater works.
Doing something really stupid gets you a lot of notice on the late night and cable comedy shows, where a lot of people get most of their news.
Slogging through the hard work of real investigations and legislation gets much less attention. Not because it isn't important. Because it isn't funny.
You remember last September, when Chaffetz was all wound up to make beau coups Fox News points by embarrassing Cecile Richards, head of the national Planned Parenthood organization, confronting her with numbers that turned out to be false and a chart that made no sense at all.
Chaffetz was rewarded for his efforts with an extended hilarious roasting by HBO's John Oliver, a nomination for PolitiFact's Lie of the Year (he lost to Donald Trump) and headlines like, "Lying With Charts, Anti-Abortion Edition" (Mother Jones), "Jason Chaffetz, grandstanding charlatan" (Salon) and "Chart shown at Planned Parenthood hearing is misleading and 'ethically wrong'" (PolitiFact).
Fast forward to last week, and two opportunities that could have been right in the wheelhouse of a crusading congressman.
First, the committee members of both parties rightly wanted answers about the horrid mess that is the public water supply in Flint, Mich. That's the man-made disaster caused when a viceroy appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder changed the main water source for that rustbelt city in a way that sharply elevated the amount of toxic lead in everyone's drinking water.
Chaffetz correctly described the situation as, "A failure of epic proportions."
But Democrats on the committee were rightly cheesed off that the investigation wasn't focused on Snyder, and one state official who had been subpoenaed didn't show. Chaffetz rightly dispatched U.S. marshals to "hunt him down." But the whole hearing made little progress.
It's a really sticky situation for Chaffetz in any event. To blame the state, he'd have to unload on Snyder, a fellow Republican.
To blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not doing enough to keep a wary eye on the state, he would have to admit that federal oversight is necessary to keep cheapskate states from poisoning their own people.
It is necessary, of course. But it's a hard sell when Chaffetz and other Republicans are hot to tell the EPA it cannot tell states, or anyone else, how to manage their air and water quality.
Thursday, another opportunity to whack somebody who really needed whacking fell to Chaffetz's panel.
The cats dragged in Martin Shkreli, a Wall Street whiz kid whose accomplishments include buying a drug company and increasing by 4,000 percent the price of a little-known but effective lifesaving drug.
Unlike Planned Parenthood's Richards, who was going to end up loved by half the country and hated by the other half no matter what Chaffetz did, everybody hates Shkreli. But there is apparently a big advantage to the televised hearing format when you, like Shkreli, already doesn't give a flying fig what the nation thinks of you.
Shkreli held his maddening frat-boy smirk, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights over and over, and was excused by a frustrated Chaffetz after only about 10 minutes. Then Shkreli went outside to tweet: "Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government."
Instant verdict of the Internet: "Martin Shkreli turns his trolling of Congress up to 11" (Washington Post). "Watch Martin Shkreli Troll Congress by Taking the Fifth Over and Over Again" (Slate). "Martin Shkreli Smirks His Way Through House Hearing, Calls Lawmakers 'Imbeciles'," (ABC News).
Was Chaffetz the villain of this piece? Clearly not. But because of the way the hearing played out, Chaffetz lost his chance to be a heroic Batman vs. Shkreli's pathological Joker, and wound up more in the role of Dudley Do-Rite sparring with Snidely Whiplash. Clueless vs. Heartless.
Oh, well. We'll always have Benghazi.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, first realized he was going bald when he was on a television program that showed the back of his head.