OK, healthcare discourse on Capitol Hill has left the realm of feisty and sailing into contentious, meanspirited, nasty and simple bad form.
While President Obama was addressing Congress, Senator Joe Wilson threw a tantrum that I thought was hurtful and actually demeaning to the wider base of his own party. Honestly, his outburst there hurt my feelings as an American. We are not just a bunch of yahoos frothing at the mouth, I promise. Who voted Wilson? What pretenses did win on? I’m sure if he shook hands all over his state promising to jump up and down flailing his arms around acting like Jim Carrey in “Dumb and Dumber” they probably would have voted the other guy.
Who remembers when Oliver North ran for office? Embarrassed Marines organized nationally around who could buy a house in Virginia quick enough to vote against him. People who owned a property there but had residency somewhere else inquired about switching in time as well.
Perhaps a similar migration into Wilson’s South Carolina district is in order, ousting this fringe lunatic at his very next reelection bid. Actually, I think he’s campaigning already: for whoever else wants the position. Did you know he’s on the House Armed Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, the Committee on Education and Labor, and the Committee on Foreign Affairs? Again I must ask difficult questions such as “how on Earth did he get his colleagues to give him these positions?” I know for a fact he didn’t say “appoint me and I’ll wiggle around in my seat fidgeting and yelling silly stuff.”
I must not just pick on Wilson; he represents reaction in assuming that many mainstream Americans support him as such. This didn’t come out of nowhere.
Imagine for a moment you are a grade school child in Wilson’s congressional district (or anywhere for that matter) and your parent just told you you’ll be missing school tomorrow because they refuse to let you watch or discuss President Obama’s address to a chosen grade school. Or imagine if you’re in the grade school where he will speak. You’re disallowed from meeting him? Imagine looking back to a time when your parent stood up in a Joe Courtney or Chris Dodd town hall meeting and yelled out obnoxious things at the top of their lungs? I thank G-d every day my mom & late father (both Republicans) lacked hatred/fear & taught me to think for myself. This hybrid of hateful Republicans is like a bad segment from Mike Judge’s movie “Idiocracy.”