Even if politics generally bores you into a coma, you have to admit that last week’s big viral video was riveting.

The video shows Phil Davison, a councilman in the 3,934-person village of Minerva, Ohio,  speaking before a group of his fellow Republicans.  Davison was seeking the nomination as Republican candidate for treasurer of Stark County, Ohio.

This wasn’t your normal political schmoozefest, though.  It’s like watching a Parkinson’s patient walk a tightrope.  To say Davison gets wound up is to do a disservice to the term.  He paces like a tiger in a cage, shouts, rants, appears close to breaking into tears.  There are points where he can barely get out what he’s trying to say.  It’s a tour de force of weirdness.  He’s got two master’s degrees, including one in communication, and he certainly learned how to communicate.

Watching it at first, I thought, “Wow, this guy is really passionate; he probably deserved to get the nomination.”  A few minutes later, I thought, “Wow, this guy really needs medication.  He probably deserved to get hosed down.”  He would have been a disaster as a candidate (although the reporter in me also realizes he would’ve been great copy).  Needless to say, he didn’t get the nomination.  He did, however, garner more than 600,000 views on YouTube and became a nationwide celebrity.  Not bad for a 39-year-old unemployed guy.

Still, you have to give the guy props for his passion.  He obviously believes in what he’s saying.  Had he ratcheted it down even a little bit, the Stark County Republicans might very well have nominated him.  But while I don’t know what the eventual vote was, I can’t believe anybody in the room could have seen Davison’s performance and thought he’d be a good candidate.  It would be like nominating somebody with rabies for dog catcher.

As a reporter, I’ve been around people who’ve let their passionate freak flag fly and it’s always a strange experience.  It’s a strange experience anyway in this part of the country, where Scandinavian stoicism is considered the cultural norm.  But seeing somebody tiptoe to the edge of losing control, maybe even stretch a toe or two over the line, is scary, funny, exhilarating and uncomfortable all at the same time.

I say that as somebody who’s done that kind of thing only once that I can remember.  I’m Sicilian, so the blood runs hot, but I’ve always had a fair amount of self-control.  The only time I ever really got to the point of irrationality (rather than just saying something stupid, which is a whole other category) was when an editor said something that angered me and I went off on him in the middle of the newsroom.  I had this weird out-of-body experience, but there was something liberating about it.  It was like a volcano had exploded.  For that few moments, there were no boundaries, no restraints.  The lava of anger simply gushed forth.   I wanted to lie back afterward and have a cigarette.  Of course, the aftermath was ugly; I wound up being suspended for three days (apparently one day for each F-bomb I dropped during the tirade, which I didn’t even remember doing, although I remember hearing a little voice in the back of my head saying, “Don’t swear”).  Still, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that found it deeply satisfying.

I saw it happen to somebody else during the summer the Lambs of Christ were in town trying to shut down the abortion clinic.  The late David Habiger, a fixture on the clinic picket lines, once started haranguing the cops and he built to a fine crescendo.  Habiger, who had much more passion than sense, was nearly in tears as he shouted at the cops, demanding to know how they could protect an abortion clinic where, he said, babies were being killed.  The tirade ended when he took a poke at a cop – not just any cop, but a police sergeant right out of central casting – and he was immediately swarmed by a half-dozen or so officers, who held him on the ground and cuffed him.  Habiger’s anger immediately turned to fear; he started whimpering and pleading to be treated gently, saying he had a heart condition.  It was one of the uglier scenes in that very ugly summer.  I’m firmly convinced to this day that had there been more men in the crowd, it would’ve sparked a full-blown riot.

That’s the real trouble with letting your passions overwhelm the better angels of your judgment.  That kind of thing can spread; once one person loses self-control, it can be contagious.

But still, on some level it’s hard not to admire people that have the courage of their emotions.  In an age when everybody’s on guard, when people have learned not say what they mean, at least not in public, it’s refreshing to watch someone let the dam burst.  Whatever else you can say about Phil Davison – or David Habiger, for that matter – nobody could ever accuse either of being a phony.  People like that dare to do something few do, to stand emotionally naked in front of others and let the consequences be damned.

Not that everybody should do that all the time.  Can you imagine what it would be like if everybody did?  Every political meeting would be like a Sicilian family gathering.  Trust me, you don’t want that.

Every so often, though, it’s good to see it happen.  It can serve as a reminder that among all the carefully controlled folks, among all those who worry about image more than substance, among all of the world’s intellectual dishonesty, some few still have the courage to be themselves  -- even if they make us a bit uncomfortable doing so.