Bruce Fischer, a reflection of Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer
Senator's husband purposely turns down a handshake from Vice President Kamala Harris
In college, an associate of mine pulled me to the side and told me that the friends I surround myself with are a reflection of me. At the time, I shrugged at him and said I couldn’t help the behavior of a grown woman (technically she was a teenager). She and I bumped heads a few times, we exchanged words and it blew over. It took her disrespecting a family member before I fully unleashed. (A condo association member once described my temper as like dynamite — calm, calm, calm, then boom! He’s not wrong.) She was oddly shocked by my outburst because I’d been desperately trying not to “light” the dynamite. She’d grown so used to being unapologetically rude and callous, and others ignored her behavior.
Dynamite or not, I just thought her behavior toward others had nothing to do with me. As long as she wasn’t disrespectful to me, whatever she did to someone else was up to them to call her out on. That was my take at the age of 20. In my early 40s, I have a completely different view. I guard my social circle stricter than I guarded my health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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From your spouse to the relatives you hang out with to your friends, if you quietly watch them being abhorrent and say nothing, I assume you are just as repugnant. And that is exactly my take on Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer's husband Bruce turning down Vice President Kamala Harris' handshake today.
Recommended Read: “Your handshake is telling on you ~ From spiritual banging to sexism, first introductions leave a lasting impression”
Harris has been a class act this entire day on January 6, even after she ran a presidential campaign that earned her 75,019,257 votes in three months. I cannot think of another candidate (outside of a man who hung out in Hawaii for Christmas and already spent eight years in the White House) who could manage to get that many votes in such a short time.
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After all that hard work and what had to be the worst memory ever at Howard University, she and President Joe Biden have accepted the results of the election — bomb threats and suspiciously broken voting machines included — today, January 6, a day in which every single solitary Republican should be embarrassed after the display of low-life childishness in 2021.
And yet, a physically grown male could not be bothered to shake her hand. Both Biden and Harris have been respectful of the Constitution, the electoral vote, the popular vote and the change in power. We could not get through this entire January 6, 2025, without another tantrum. As the guy in college tried to quietly warn me, when someone around you is acting stupid, observers look at the whole crew, not just the offender. But to act like this in somebody’s workplace is mind-boggling to me.
While I sometimes run into women and men who are polar opposites of their spouses, including ones I’m close to, when your significant other is openly disrespectful at your job, that ups the level of idiocy. Unless someone is a stone-cold criminal or physically or mentally abusive, there’s no other reason to just openly refuse to shake their hand during a professional gathering marking the beginning of the 119th Congress. I learned a lot about Deb Fischer and Bruce Fischer from watching this handshake exchange — and I mean that in the worst way possible.
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