Rep. Francis Rooney only had a one-minute speech to make his case against offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. And so, the Florida Republican whipped up a visual aid in apparently as much time. Floor charts aren’t an unusual sight in Congress, but Rooney’s floor chart was unusual because Rooney’s floor chart was unusually bad. It was hand drawn.
What’s with the homemade chart? @RepRooney‘s office says the hand-written message was intentional and was meant to “break through the noise.” pic.twitter.com/x9OiZhWZlc
— Philip Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) January 18, 2018
The chart was low-tech: white poster board with black letters written in sharpie, an inexplicable mix of uppercase and lowercase letters pushed to the bottom right of the canvas. Looking at the sentence — particularly the word Eastern — it seems Rooney went too-big-too-fast and ran out of room. But the bad, off-center penmanship wasn’t an accident.
A Rooney aide said the idea was that “a simple, hand-written message would ‘break through the noise’ of a parade of one minute speeches.” Judging by Twitter at least, it worked.
