Life_Long_Dem!
08-14-2009, 01:15 PM
IT’S HARD TO SAY what’s more amusing, the wild-eyed rants at town hall meetings or the conservative attempts to portray those snarling sentiments as genuine mainstream anger about the president’s health care plans.
Some Republicans are gleeful in the hope that the testy town hall encounters will derail Obama’s signature initiative.
Question: Do they really think the country is dopey enough to mistake microwave mobs staging Potemkin Village protests as an accurate expression of true American opinion?
If so, they’re delusional.
Most people have a basic sense of civility. When asking a question of an elected official at a public meeting, they try to do so in a way that is intelligent and reasonably respectful rather than belligerent and boorish.
Not these crowds. The other night, listening to talk radio, I heard a learned political philosopher explain why: You simply can’t be expected to be civil when everywhere around you, tyranny is supplanting liberty in the land.
But alas for the conservative fringers, as a mode of communication, the angry, ill-informed, accusatory questions stop a wee bit short of being truly persuasive. I don’t know many people who say: “See those agitated kooks making daffy charges? I want to be like them.’’
Well, sure, Glenn Beck. But not counting crazed right-wing media types, I mean.
Now, I’m not saying that anyone who disagrees with Obama’s health care hopes falls into that category. I support the basic concept, as long as the plan is paid for and the public option doesn’t create an uneven playing field. As with any legislation, however, there are pluses and minuses, which means there are thoughtful critiques to be made of the various proposals.
But thoughtful is not what we’ve seen. Instead, some of the, um, discourse has been preposterous enough to leave one chuckling in disbelief. Take the agitated fellow who dressed down Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter as crooked. He apparently thought the Constitution guaranteed him the right to be called on at a town hall meeting.
“One day God’s going to stand before you and he is going to judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill, and then you’ll get your just deserts,’’ he warned.
Oooo-kay.
Then there’s the guy who told Virginia Representative Thomas Perriello that he was “angry that you voted for the unconstitutional nationalization [!] of our health care.’’ Having displayed that stunning constitutional scholarship, he declared in a later interview that President Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.
When another bitter birther at Delaware Representative Mike Castle’s town meeting insisted that the president “is not an American citizen,’’ she won applause and shouts of agreement from the crowd. “I don’t want this flag to change,’’ she continued in a yell. “I want my country back.’’
That would be the Grand Republic of Irrational Rants, whose citizens have been driven to derangement by the fact that Barack Obama is president.
Now, corporate-funded conservative astroturfing firms like FreedomWorks, chaired by former House majority leader Dick Armey, a Republican who is now a Washington lobbyist, and Americans for Prosperity, led by Tim Phillips, who once made big bucks from Enron for generating supposed grassroots support for energy deregulation, have helped catalyze these crowds. Meanwhile, a right-wing activist has circulated a memo recommending that conservatives rattle a lawmaker with interruptions and otherwise work to put him on the defensive. (Yes, I know that the White House has now ginned up its allies too, some of whom have been loud and aggressive.)
But even if you weren’t aware of all that, it would be hard to mistake the hostile town hall encounters for a serious barometer of voter sentiment. Sure, some talk-radio types are insisting they are. Lawmakers know better, however. After all, if these folks really spoke for the country, Democrats wouldn’t control Congress, and Obama would never have been elected.
All we’ve learned here is something we already knew: This nation never has to worry about suffering from a shortage of kooks, cranks, and ideologues.
Just don’t try to tell us they are level-headed, mainstream Americans.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/14/when_the_kooks_take_the_stage?mode=PF
Some Republicans are gleeful in the hope that the testy town hall encounters will derail Obama’s signature initiative.
Question: Do they really think the country is dopey enough to mistake microwave mobs staging Potemkin Village protests as an accurate expression of true American opinion?
If so, they’re delusional.
Most people have a basic sense of civility. When asking a question of an elected official at a public meeting, they try to do so in a way that is intelligent and reasonably respectful rather than belligerent and boorish.
Not these crowds. The other night, listening to talk radio, I heard a learned political philosopher explain why: You simply can’t be expected to be civil when everywhere around you, tyranny is supplanting liberty in the land.
But alas for the conservative fringers, as a mode of communication, the angry, ill-informed, accusatory questions stop a wee bit short of being truly persuasive. I don’t know many people who say: “See those agitated kooks making daffy charges? I want to be like them.’’
Well, sure, Glenn Beck. But not counting crazed right-wing media types, I mean.
Now, I’m not saying that anyone who disagrees with Obama’s health care hopes falls into that category. I support the basic concept, as long as the plan is paid for and the public option doesn’t create an uneven playing field. As with any legislation, however, there are pluses and minuses, which means there are thoughtful critiques to be made of the various proposals.
But thoughtful is not what we’ve seen. Instead, some of the, um, discourse has been preposterous enough to leave one chuckling in disbelief. Take the agitated fellow who dressed down Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter as crooked. He apparently thought the Constitution guaranteed him the right to be called on at a town hall meeting.
“One day God’s going to stand before you and he is going to judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill, and then you’ll get your just deserts,’’ he warned.
Oooo-kay.
Then there’s the guy who told Virginia Representative Thomas Perriello that he was “angry that you voted for the unconstitutional nationalization [!] of our health care.’’ Having displayed that stunning constitutional scholarship, he declared in a later interview that President Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.
When another bitter birther at Delaware Representative Mike Castle’s town meeting insisted that the president “is not an American citizen,’’ she won applause and shouts of agreement from the crowd. “I don’t want this flag to change,’’ she continued in a yell. “I want my country back.’’
That would be the Grand Republic of Irrational Rants, whose citizens have been driven to derangement by the fact that Barack Obama is president.
Now, corporate-funded conservative astroturfing firms like FreedomWorks, chaired by former House majority leader Dick Armey, a Republican who is now a Washington lobbyist, and Americans for Prosperity, led by Tim Phillips, who once made big bucks from Enron for generating supposed grassroots support for energy deregulation, have helped catalyze these crowds. Meanwhile, a right-wing activist has circulated a memo recommending that conservatives rattle a lawmaker with interruptions and otherwise work to put him on the defensive. (Yes, I know that the White House has now ginned up its allies too, some of whom have been loud and aggressive.)
But even if you weren’t aware of all that, it would be hard to mistake the hostile town hall encounters for a serious barometer of voter sentiment. Sure, some talk-radio types are insisting they are. Lawmakers know better, however. After all, if these folks really spoke for the country, Democrats wouldn’t control Congress, and Obama would never have been elected.
All we’ve learned here is something we already knew: This nation never has to worry about suffering from a shortage of kooks, cranks, and ideologues.
Just don’t try to tell us they are level-headed, mainstream Americans.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/14/when_the_kooks_take_the_stage?mode=PF