Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Congress / Kotz / Law and Order / Politics Is It Morally OK to Punch Out a Town Hall Protester?
Posted by Pete Kotz on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:20 AM
Comments (23)
Showing 1-23 of 23
So you agree that Prof. Henry Gates should be punched out? Is this "a very good thing?"
After all, HE was acting like an asshole in public ... and look what happened to him...
I guess it all depends on who you are ... good to see you support thuggery. We now know you support the brownshirts.
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Yeah the Union thugs are doing this a lot now. Depite the fact that their jobs have been sent overseas by both Repugs and Dems. They are the ones that should really be screaming because they lost some really high paying jobs.
THis is obviously an attempt by politicians to insite violence so they can clamp down and control
"But some congressmen are fighting back by getting unions to provide security."
Sounds like mini-Godfathers and their enforcers. Or little Hitlers and their Brownshirts.
Yeah we are definately moving into fascism. Where are the police at these town halls?? Remember the "Don't taze me bro" kid that asked John Kerry about Scull and Bones.
"It's one thing to exercise your 1st Amendment rights. But it's another to stop everyone else from exercising theirs."
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Stopping people from exercising their rights is exactly what these teabaggers are aiming to do. Their marching orders are to disrupt the democratic process of representatives talking to their constituents. They are no better than the terrorists who don't want democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I blame TV- people can't tell Springer from reality.
Of all people, Bart Gordon figured it out- one on one constituent meetings to defuse this nonsense.
The people showing up to disrupt these meetings are the sort of ignorant fools who listen to call-in radio shows all day and think they are hearing reliable news. So they are not intelligent enough to understand that they have been whipped into a frenzy by guys hired by the same insurance companies who routinely deny the protestors' claims for benefits while systematically increasing the cost of their insurance. What we are seeing also are people who would like to rewrite the election results because they cannot believe their president is an African-American with a funny-sounding name. They felt more secure with the imbecile from Texas because he seemed more familiar to them. We are witnessing the result of fear being combined with lack of information. How sadly ironic that the protestors have been duped into cutting-off the very information they themselves so badly need. It is the same mentality which results in book-burning, and that is how much respect I have for it.
Its pretty simple really. If you disrupt a public meeting, you get kicked out. While the idea of Teamsters kicking teabaggers to the curb brings a smile to my face, the removing of disruptive persons should be conducted by the local police.
Alan, I think you may have succumbed to the liberal faith in information and reason: "If only we could get the true information to these people...."
I am coming to believe that accurate information doesn't matter. What traditionally mattered to this crowd is not the accuracy of the information but its source. As the media have become more fragmented, more people rely for information on sources where they will hear a point of view they already agree with. If they heard the accurate information on healthcare from Fox or Rush Limbaugh, they might listen -- might.
But these days it seems that even their usually trusted sources of information are not enough. If a reliable Republican like Mike Castle from Delaware announces publicly that Obama is a US citizen, to this crowd it doesn't mean they should drop the whole birther crap. It just means that Castle has been co-opted by the Obama Conspiracy.
If Jesus came to a town hall meeting and told Marsha Blackburn's and Phil Valentine's crowd that one of the healthcare plans in Congress was a good idea, the likely effect would be that Jesus gets crucified all over again, with Marsha denouncing him as a socialist and Valentine reminding everyone that "Jew-sus" ain't from around her and is "one of those people who killed our Lord."
"The people showing up to disrupt these meetings are the sort of ignorant fools who listen to call-in radio shows all day and think they are hearing reliable news."
Well TJ Gram on WVOL whipped his crowd up against Jim Cooper when he didnt immediately sign on to the plan. He was even playing a parody song about him. Repubs are getting hammered as well. I dont see where any of our Reps are having them either. Also about reliable news, it was the cheerleading main stream media that said Sadam had the weapons. If you have just a few mega corporations putting out the info, it is going to be slanted without much fact checking.
Also if you listen to Rush or the other talk shows and CNN MSNBC FOX etc., you will hear the talking points put out by the political party. The thing is they get the talking points or a press release and they just run with it. You will basically hear the same thing spouted over and over till the sheeple believe it. Then they dont want any facts getting in the way. Luckily we have Google and Youtube. When you hear something, do yourself a favor and research
But some congressmen are fighting back by getting unions to provide security.
Yeah, kinda like when the Hell's Angels provided "security" for the Rolling Stones.
Now, we need to find some little old ladies with crosses to attack.
Tobin et al,
Where were those of you who are criticizing the town hall protesters each time some group of left wing loons shouted down a Conservative speaker in a similar forum?
This is one of the more simple issues around. You either condemn both sides for doing the same thing or you keep quiet.
As for the role of the union enforcers, this is an excellent reminder of why the card check legislation is such a bad idea. Does anyone really think that workers who request a secret ballot election won't get the same treatment as the town hall protesters?
"Yeah, kinda like when the Hell's Angels provided "security" for the Rolling Stones"
Thats great,
Now why are the congressional robber barons using union thugs instead of the police?
Just wait till all this "printed money" hits the market and people have to take a wheel barrel full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. The town halls will get really good. Lets see, no jobs and $1,000 for a burger.
S'cuse me, Anonymous, wasn't this the dialogue in a gospel song about the end days? Talk about fear mongering? You people are so silly. You don't have hard times personally, so you deny that there are hard times, that there should be reforms, that some people need help. Too bad, I Wish We'd All Been Ready. Why does this scenario remind me SO Much of the scene when we were integrating the schools in the south in the '50's and '60's? Screaming religious white people being asses for what they think is right. Goooo rednecks!
"Also if you listen to Rush or the other talk shows and CNN MSNBC FOX etc., you will hear the talking points put out by the political party."
Yes, you hear talking points and that is why I don't watch or listen to any of them but the difference is people who listen to Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow aren't racing out to shout down people at public meetings, at least not many of them. We chuckle at the sarcasm and go on with our lives. Yes, Mark Rogers, there are instances where some "left wing loons shouted down a Conservative speaker in a similar forum?" You can find instances of anything you want to find, but it is right-wingers who have taken this to a whole new ballgame. I was bored and was watching a town-hall meeting with Senator Cardin of Maryland on CSpan and some of the questions that were shouted at Cardin were quite uninformed, to say the least. You could just see Cardin practically rolling his eyes at the insanity. But I predict this is all going to backfire on the right in a big way. Most Americans are going to get pretty sick of this immaturity.
"Yes, you hear talking points and that is why I don't watch or listen to any of them but the difference is people who listen to Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow"
No they just threw pies and yes they did shout down many of the neocons and said crazy outlandish things about Bush AND the thing is; a lot of this stuff turned out to be very very true. In fact, Oberman has recently come out with some stuff about Chaney that is considered, OH God forbid, conspiracy theories...
People on the left, right, middle north, south, east west, should all be fed uo with government and what has happened over the last 20 years
D, I agree with you. But regardless of what Olbermann says, he does it in a humorous way and the people who listen to him don't go around ranting and raving at "tea-parties" and town-hall meetings. If he actually gave marching orders to do so, most of his audience would ignore it.
"People on the left, right, middle north, south, east west, should all be fed uo with government and what has happened over the last 20 years"
It's been happening far longer than twenty years. Reagan was just as bad, probably even worse, in terms of cynically using government powers to get what he wanted. Not to mention Johnson and Nixon, who were before my time.
Chris,
It isn't about one or two incidents on the Left. The town hall protesters, however wrong when they misbehave, are simply demonstrting the tactics they have learned watching the Left since the 1960s.
Today's protesters are, if anything, a shadow of the anti-war crowd. But they either lived through that period or studied it in school and they know how effective such protests can be.
So don't take such a moralistic position without appreciating that these protesters are the result of the Left's willingness to tolerate this behavior for years.
