STOP THE PRESSES: Politician Talks Sense

[realthog]

Here's a slice of transcript from a town hall meeting held by Representative Barney Frank the other day on the proposed healthcare reforms:

QUESTIONER (holding a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache): Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama expressly has supported this policy? Why are you supporting it?

FRANK: When you ask me that question I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?

You want me to answer your question? As you stand there, with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the first amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.

Apparently the response of the audience was to cheer. As was mine, on reading this passage. It is surely past time that the supposedly rational members of our political institutions and our media stopped treating the craziest accusations and lies with deference and started describing them as what they actually are.

Comments

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Dude! I just made a post about the exact same thing :O

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I was just reading it, gasping at the synchronicity!

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

And wow, I didn't know Barney Frank was Jewish until now -- or I'd forgotten. So I edited the post to include that info.

Really, what a perfect illustration of my point, right there.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

ngh. IS Jewish. The heck was I typing?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You were grammatically correct. No need to chastise yourself!

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

His outspokenness, his Barney "Frank"ness is why we keep on electing and re-electing him.
Somebody has to tell it like it is! Barney is not known for being deferential to anyone.
He came out as gay 21 years ago ("I have not had secrets for 21 years") when it was definitely a riksy move for a person in public service.
There ought to be more like him.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"There ought to be more like him."

Too right.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, good for him. May he flourish.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yes!! I saw this on the news yesterday and it made my night! Now if only more senators would follow his example.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I saw this on the news yesterday"

You lucky person. The YouTube video is okay, I guess, but somehow Not The Same.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Network news remains good for something... surprisingly enough.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Oooh, but NPR etc., go all "O no! Couldn't he have expressed it all so much better, so much nicer, so that both sides could have a real dialog?"

These enablers need to acknowledge THEIR wholly owning corporate overlords and stop this bs about being 'public.'

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You have to realize, C, that when the Founders talked about Freedom of Speech they meant the freedom of hate-filled right-wing nincompoops to scream whatever rabid incoherent bullshit they were told to. Any other definition is, of course, a travesty of the intentions of the US Constitution.

I have this on the authority of no less a figure than Pat Robertson, who himself had it from a spacefaring cucumber from an as-yet-undiscovered moon of Pluto, so it must be right.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

you notice the person couldnt answer what planet, must not have been in her practiced scripts ...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You assume she knows the meaning of the world "planet" . . .

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

uh Hollywood? she didnt remember which one she goes to....

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"uh Hollywood? she didnt remember which one she goes to...."

You'd be surprised how many people don't know what a planet is. Remember, a ridiculous percentage of the population believe the sun goes round the earth, which latter is at the centre of the universe.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

and every time something is launced into outer space, it pokes a hole in the sky and our air leaks out....

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the famous Spike Milligan poem:

Rain

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in.
The holes are very small,
That's why rain's so thin.

Actually, of course, if you think the earth's at the centre of the universe with everything else going round it and being relatively small, then Creationism becomes a far more rational conceit: if the earth is "special" like this, then the logical progression to belief that it (not to mention us) has been specially created is a not entirely unreasonable one. It's a fine example of the perils of building a model on false axioms.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I have had cats, I tend towards Felinism, which means the cats ass is the center of the universe.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for posting this - I've only seen the YouTube clip on other people's posts, and there's no sound on this computer. I've been itching to know what he said...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Glad to have been the bearer of some innocent pleasure!

[melindadansky.livejournal.com]

It was awesome. I liked the part where he said "Did I put someone down? Oh. Right. I said the woman who called me a Nazi was out of her mind."

[realthog.livejournal.com]

What's depressing in all this is the steadfast refusal of supposedly moderate rightists to come clean and actively denounce these mindless hooligans.

My feeling is that the fellow-travelers who in private say that of course the whole Obama Death Camps Nazi Medicine stuff is embarrassing tripe but in public do nothing to condemn this tidal wave of incoherent hatred and racism are every bit as contemptible as the goons who foment and utter it.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Senator Frank just became my hero.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of his glorious follow-up until Melinda (see a couple of lines above) mentioned it.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

'Nuff respect.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

He's a Representative, not a Senator, though God knows he would most likely make a great Senator. However, both positions are currently filled...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"He's a Representative, not a Senator"

Thanks for the correction -- I could've sworn he was a senator. I'll go amend my howler.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"God knows he would most likely make a great Senator"

Oh, and I'd most certainly agree with you there.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I found it refreshing to see the worm finally turn. Frank, at his best, lives up to his name (both names, he's not afraid of a bit of a barney).

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I found it refreshing to see the worm finally turn"

You betcha!

you clearly heard that wrong

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

This is just more of the same horror of the AntiDiningRoomTablePerKin that we have come to expect from the Red Hordes of the Obamanites.

You clearly need more da, da, da



that should adjust your earWorm to help you hear the true traditional family values dadaism...

Re: you clearly heard that wrong

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You mean it's only because of the damn' camera angle that we couldn't tell she actually had four legs and was wearing a table cloth? In that case, too right, how dare Sen. Frank discriminate against those who are made entirely of wood or woodlike substances?

Re: you clearly heard that wrong

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Come SEE the horrors of the evil repressive Liberal media and it's persecution of White Christian American DiningRoomTablePerKin!!!