I speak sometimes

I think the coolest political title is probably speaker. There's only one in a particular government: the Speaker of the House. We have one, and Britain has one, which leads me to believe that most parliamentary governments probably have one too. Sure, it would be nice to be a king or emperor or even duke, but there have been a lot of bad guys to hold those titles. Ivan the Terrible was an emperor. Herod was a king. Richelieu was a duke, in addition to being a cardinal, and he was kind of a bastard. Have you ever heard of a Speaker of the House be styled "the terrible?" Well, I suppose an argument could be made for both Gingrich and Pelosi, but I doubt they will be called that in history books. It's a little early to tell with Nancy, though.


But it's such an ordinary word, for example, my computer has two speakers, that it seems so interesting that the second person in succession to the presidency has that title. The speaker is the voice for essentially 1/2 of 1/3 of the government. It also just sounds funny to be called Mr(s). Speaker. In my case, it would be Mr., but the current one is a woman, hence the (s). According to Wikipedia, there is a speaker of the House of Lords that gets to be called Lord Speaker. The House of Lords gets some pretty cool titles, but I like the incongruity of how pedestrian Mr. Speaker sounds compared to the importance of the office. Although the Lord Speaker gets a ceremonial mace. That might make up for the novelty of Mr.