"You're kind of a health nut. How are you going to get the smell of smoke out of the speaker's office?"

Chuck Todd asked Paul Ryan on "Meet the Press" today. (Boehner was " John Boehner is a well-known chain smoker.")

Ryan said: "That's a really good question. We've been talking about that, they have these ozone machines, apparently, that you can detoxify the environment. But I'm going to have to work on the carpeting in here. You know when you ever go to a hotel room or get a rental car that has been smoked? That's what this smells like."

It's especially a problem for Ryan because he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin, and doesn't keep a separate living space in Washington. He goes home every weekend, but during the week, he's in his office all day and also sleeps there: "I start my day at 6:00 in the morning. I end at about 11:30 at night. It's just become a really efficient way for me to do the people's business by just staying right here."

"Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin was elected the 62nd speaker of the House on Thursday..."

"... taking the gavel that he never sought to wield from John A. Boehner, who relinquished it under fire," says the NYT.

Mr. Ryan received 236 votes, a comfortable margin that included several of the hardline conservatives who had worked to oust Mr. Boehner.

"Now, what could possibly be wrong with the description 'hard worker'?"

Asks Greta Van Susteren before playing video of Melissa Harris-Perry calling out a guest for saying that Paul Ryan is a "hard worker."

This is Harris-Perry's stern warning:  "I want us to be super-careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."

Oh, so the slave is the idealized "hard worker"? Then why, just a couple weeks ago did a textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, have to apologize and agree to change a geography textbook that referred to slaves as "workers"?

On reading a caption in his geography textbook that described slaves as “workers”, Coby Burren sent a photo and an annoyed message to his mother. "We was real hard workers wasn’t we," he wrote.

Roni Dean-Burren was also disturbed by the language, and posted about the book online. Her comments went viral and the publisher swiftly decided to rewrite the section....

"We are deeply sorry,"  said the publisher's chief executive for a map of "Patterns of Immigration" that had a notation: "The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

Even assuming you want to follow the instruction to "be super-careful," it's hard — if I may use the word — to figure out which way to go.

The McGraw-Hill incident teaches that you should never refer to slavery without framing it in somber moral terms. It can't be mixed in with other matters as if it were not a unique evil.

The "Paul Ryan is a 'hard worker'" incident teaches that slavery must be mixed into discussions of, well, perhaps anything. If someone complains about the heat, maybe you should get on their case for not acknowledging how much more slaves suffered from the heat. If somebody comments that the food isn't very good, you should lay into them about how poorly fed the slaves were? (That sounds like the opposite of "super-careful.")

"Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan said he is 'ready and eager' to be speaker of the House..."

"... and he believes the beleaguered Republican Conference is "ready to move forward as one, united team."

"The best thing I can assume is that [Paul Ryan' really doesn’t want the job [of Speaker of the House]."

"You put forth a list of conditions that nobody is going to throw their weight behind, and force people to tell you ‘no,’ rather than the other way around . . . that’s the only thing that makes sense to me."

Said Representative Tim Huelskamp, of Kansas, speaking to The National Review, who is "put off" by the "list of unmeetable conditions," especially getting rid of the motion to vacate the chair, which lets the members of the House vote to oust the Speaker.

"It was my understanding that Thomas Jefferson thought that was good for the House," Huelskamp says, "and Paul Ryan thinks he doesn’t have to live by that?"

So now there's a concept that whatever Thomas Jefferson thought was good we the people of the present ought to stick with? Speaking of lists, help me make a list of things Thomas Jefferson thought that we'd hate to have to live by today.

IN THE COMMENTS: Crossett offered for the list of things Thomas Jefferson thought:

That Jesus wasn't divine. The Jefferson Bible would make a few of the current Congressmen squirm.

Fully human Jesus was good enough for Thomas Jefferson and Paul Ryan thinks he doesn’t have to live by that?