Town Hall Protest Mentality: The View From the Bottom of the Barrel

The divide between right and left has never been wider. Why? Maybe because hatred has found a voice through the liberty of free speech. Here in America we can say anything about anyone if we refer to it as our "opinion." We can call someone a killer just as long as we put "alleged" in front of "killer." And even if someone is too stupid to put caveats before their statements, they might not be called out. Here we have two videos showing people who are obviously self-righteous in their ideals. Self-righteous enough, that is, to think that offensive name-calling and portrayals of President Obama as Hitler will be given the same platform as the subject at hand: universal health care coverage.

So who are these people who have taken the chance of an open forum to demonstrate their anger to the detriment of those who want to exchange with their congressman or senator ideas of great national importance?

Eugene Kane, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Some people think it's all the same people. But conservatives continue to deny they are orchestrating this stuff even though all of the crowds seem to have one thing in common.

It's pretty much an all-white constituency, which means it's not reflective of the people who voted Obama into office. Even reasonable Republicans acknowledge they haven't made inroads with minorities, which is the main reason Obama won, along with drawing a significant number of white voters, too.

I've been reading the health care bill and will attempt to come up with some form of annotation to a Christofascist's screed point by miserable, tedious, but still-lucid point. It's difficult: my annotations sometimes wind up being longer than the contended part of the bill. And I feel the need to make every statement as clear as possible, sometimes even writing in parables and metaphors (hmmm, sounds familiar) because, let's face it, many of the protesters (most of whom haven't even read the bill) have the cumulative I.Q. of a dead flashlight battery.

Eugene Kane Cont'd:

The crowds for town hall protests, tea parties and the birther movement are largely segregated by race which means those movements are not reflective of the majority of American voters right now.

My advice to the birthers, tea partiers and the town hall folks - who all might have reasonable complaints about Obama's policies - is this: Get yourself some color and you might get taken more seriously.

Sorry, Gene, but even if they wanted to take in some tokens, they couldn't yank them in fast enough. Since they don't associate with birther, tea partiers and town hall harpies, that means they're smarter than them. The Civil Rights movement of the 60s involved a certain amount of focus. The gay rights movement has (some) focus. But by showing that they'll grab onto anything, no matter how pointless and screwy it is shows that uber-right wingnuts have an enormous lack of focus as well as downright stupidity.