For the Sake of Science

I attended an awards dinner tonight as part of a school function and the keynote speaker was none other than Maeghan Maloney. In addition to representing quacks, she also represents the 57th district of the State of Maine and gets her name around a surprising amount, including at UMA. (Despite my largely negative opinions of her, I do have to give her credit for not being a lazy legislator.) I found out she would be speaking only after I agreed to attend, but I would have gone anyway. I don’t care to engage with her in any way, but I’m certainly not going to avoid things because she will be there; the same goes for her husband. (He wasn’t in attendance.)

Most of her speech was political in nature and even if I had no idea who she was, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. (And really, had I given a speech at this thing I wouldn’t expect people to be on the edge of their seats.) However, two things did catch my attention. The first was from the person introducing her:

Meagan Maloney cares about social justice.

I have my doubts.

The second comes from her. I’m only going to give the first part of the quote because I ended up finishing it in my head without listening to what she actually said:

People who give back most in civic engagement…

…are pro-bono lawyers who fight for the First Amendment.

I don’t know as she would agree, though.

One thing to which I was looking forward was her handing me my award. I had every intention of smiling and being cordial, but the humor of the situation really tickled me. Unfortunately, the way things happened to work out was that my bio/Haiti professor handed us our awards because I guess it was faster. We took pictures after that and Mrs. Maloney didn’t join us. She did for the other groups, but I presume the matter of the situation dictated a little prudence on her part. I was going to make it a point to not stand right next to her out of concern for not being a social douche anyway, but staying separate was understandable.

Now if I could just see her separated from her seat I would be perfectly happy.

Filed under: Personal | Tagged: Christopher Maloney, Civic Engagement, Maeghan Maloney |