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A top ally of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy loved "The Wire" so much that he gave the inspiring House Speaker an ornate silver bowl as an ode to a famous scene from the HBO show where one politician tells another that being in charge involves eating a lot of crap, according to a new book.
Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry's gesture mostly missed the mark since McCarthy had never seen an episode of the acclaimed series that is often listed among the greatest TV series of all time. Nonetheless, McHenry continued to email the Republican clips of the scene that incredibly is a parable an actual politician used to tell.
"'How's your day going' or 'Get used to it,'" McHenry, who was once chief deputy whip and now is in line to chair the powerful House Financial Services Committee, would add in a one-sentence email with the link, according to New York Times reporter Robert Draper's book, "Weapons of Mass Delusion' which was published on Tuesday.
In "The Wire" scene, Tommy Carcetti, a Baltimore politician partially modeled after the real-life Martin O'Malley, asks "Young Tony" a former mayor of the city, why he didn't run for reelection. At this point in the show, Carcetti has just notched a major upset having ousted incumbent Mayor Clarence Royce. Similar to real-life, Carcetti's status as a white mayor of a predominately Black city becomes a major theme within the show's exploration of racial politics.
Tony has a quick answer for the up-and-coming Carcetti. It is the story of a beautiful-seeming gift given to him on his first day as mayor.
"There's a knock at the door in the corner of the room, and Pete comes walking in carrying this gorgeous Sèvres silver bowl, hand chased ... 'It's from the unions,' Tony, played by Sam Coppola, says. So I think it's a present ... I look down at it. It's disgusting. I said, 'What the hell is this?' He said, 'What the hell's it look like? 'I said, 'It looks like shit.'"
Pete tells him it is, in fact, a bowl of shit.
"'Eat it?' He says, 'Yeah. You're the mayor. You've got to eat it.'"
By the time the story is almost over, Anthony describes three more bowls of shit that end up on his desk.
"And you know what, Tommy? That's what it is. You're sitting, eating shit all day long, day after day, year after year."
Back in real life, McHenry was not content with just sending his friend YouTube clips. So according to Draper, the North Carolinian bought an ornate silver bowl that was once the property of the British army.
"McHenry then presented it to Kevin McCarthy, who searched the exterior to see if McHenry had engraved it, which he had not," Draper wrote. "McCarthy missed the point anyway. It was what was inside the bowl that counted."
Representatives of McCarthy and McHenry did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
