Archive for the 'Mouthing Off' Category

Last night I was never prouder of my Congressman and of my neighbors. Conversely certain other so-called neighbors scared the willies out of me.

The event went according to plan. Congressman Hall – who the hecklers should have known has a lot of professional experience standing in front of crowds both supportive and hostile – kept his cool, supporters politely applauded and the angry mob snarled.

Some of the highlights included a 15 year old girl being booed, a small business owner being booed and the Congressman being booed when he told the story of his brother’s extended hospital stay and death and concurrent troubles with the family’s insurance plan.

They even booed the mention of Senator Kennedy.

One woman complained that if we provide coverage for the estimated 48 million Americans without insurance there will be long lines at her doctor’s office. The guy in the picture above screamed about all of our problems being the fault of illegal immigrants.

And the best line of the night, from the Congressman himself “…well actually the czars were before communism….”

I suppose I should just avoid these sort of events since all they do is get me aggravated and push me to write angry letters to the editor and blog posts and get me into more trouble. At least that’s what Sue tells me.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post has a great perspective on the current fracas coming soon to a Town Hall near you:

But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt?

Link

I’m inclined to agree but to add that a significant portion of the screamers are motivated by fear, not by fact. I’ll leave exactly what they are afraid of for others to guess.

More pictures from the event are here. The Journal News article is here. I was interviewed by News12 and I’ll put the story up as soon as it’s on their web site.

*Wow, two Kaiser Chiefs references in one week. They should pay me.

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