Is it Scarlet O’Hara, forced by Rhett Butler to play the seductive Woman in Red at Melanie Wilkes’ birthday party, after he discovers her flirtations with Melanie’s husband? Is it the proverbial skunk at the picnic? Or was the expelled GOP Rep. emulating Davey Crockett in the most recent film account of the Alamo (which, I note with shame, I barely acknowledged this year since my week was occupied with another more personal tragedy), defiantly staring down his foes after the battle was lost?

Or do you have a better analogy? Whatever George Santos was doing by showing up last night, it took gall, which we know the serial liar, fraudster and poseur has in abundance.

Although Santos, when he was expelled from Congress last in December, declared, “to hell with this place” in his exit (emulating Davey, who headed to Texas after losing his Congressional race saying, “You can go to hell — I’m going to Texas!”), he surprised everyone by using the lifetime floor privileges former members of the House hold, even disgusting ones like him. At last year’s State of the Union address, Santos got in a confrontation with Senator Mitt Romney almost a year before Santos was finally kicked out of the House. Mitt told him, quite correctly “You don’t belong here!” Yet here he was again!

At some perverse level,I nearly admire Santos’ brass. I remember a despicable, racist, greedy community theater nearby that shall remain nameless. I fought with the group constantly during my sole engagement with them, as its members and antediluvian board and production staff abused my actors and sabotaged my show. After the debacle was done with, I demanded a meeting with the entire organization leadership, over twenty strong, to tell them face to face exactly what was wrong with their club and the way it operated. I knew they hated my guts, as the saying goes, and I didn’t care: I met the creeps on their own ground, me versus the mob, and condemned them to their smug, wrinkled all-white faces with facts and episodes, one after another. Boy, that was fun (it was Grace’s idea).

Unfortunately, in Santos’ case, his appearance last night represented as much cluelessness as defiance. The man is a sociopath and has made it very clear that he doesn’t regret his trail of deception and lies or the degree to which he disgraced the august body to which he had been elected (conceding here that a Congress containing the likes of Jamaal Bowman, Rahida Tlaib, Adam Schiff, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Nancy Pelosi and others is depressingly hard to disgrace).

But what was it?