Someone told me that one line of defense trotted out for South Carolina Republican congressman Joe Wilson's ill-bred, uncouth and untrue shout of ''You lie!'' at President Obama is that that sort of thing is done all the time in Britain's House of Commons.
Would Rep. Wilson, the small-y yahoo (the original meaning, from Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels''), indeed have fit right in in that ''Mother of Parliaments,'' where the cut and thrust of debate extends to a lot of raised voices?
Yes and no. Shouting and catcalls are part of the culture in the Commons, and an entertaining sight it can be, too. But rules that go back more than a century-and-a-half enjoin members from making accusations about lying or being drunk. Winston Churchill, a tippler of note and an orator of the first water who may never have been called out under the ban on the latter, himself tiptoed around the former by referring to an opponent's ''terminological inexactitude.''
Rep. Wilson's rudeness was not only perhaps a disappointment to his mother and a violation of Section 370 of House rules, but saying that President Obama was lying about illegal immigrants and health care was factually insupportable, as many political fact-checking and news organizations scrambled to find out before the gasps in the House chamber had subsided. (Not that those people who make it a point of honor of being hostile to fact will ever let that deter them.)
So, would it be fine to behave like the British when it comes to an outburst in Congress, but not when it comes to British health care programs? Heck, give me a public option, and I'd let Congress holler its collective heads off.
Thousands are assembling in Washington, D.C. as tax-protesting Tea Partiers (I sure hope they didn't drive on any of those socialist/communist/fascist taxpayer-funded roads to get there). Rep. Wilson has positioned himself to become the popular choice for standard bearer of a recrudescence of an old American political movement. Let's call it for what it is: the Neo-Know Nothings.
Follow Patt Morrison on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Op-ed columnist
Jim Wallis: It Takes a Movement: How Access to Power Can Be Dangerous -- Part 4
As defenses go though, it's always been weak sauce. Who seriously thinks Joe Wilson, or any of his tea-party buddies, really cares how they do it in the UK? Hell, that's where they have that goddam socialized medicine, ain't it?
"you lie" = 2 words, raised voice
sound rebuttal with factual data and historical context, maybe some rhetoric regarding any subject you so desire = 500 words - (italics) infinity (/italics)
So based on the above, he won by that alone. There is always a regretfully large swath of the population who will support the short, ribald, response over the long, intellectual and factually based on anytime. Because the, let's be honest, simpleton believes that if he put you in a dither with 2 words, you should refute him in no less than 4.
Joe Wilson is just the new nothing of the week. Some become part of the regular menu (the eejit Palin) and some phase out quickly ( the equally eejit Joe the Plumber). I don't know how long his shelf life is. He may be a leader. It depends on how successful his eejitness is.
Health Care Bill To Cover Undocumented Immigrants? False.
12,961 Comments
In the UK, those same figures insulting each other on the floor of the house are often to be found later knocking back a few wets in the bar.
I was informed by a scholar of American politics there was a time people turned up to debates with firearms. It may have been that you had to enact some strict codes of behavior to stop that famous American method of settling a dispute, a shoot out!?
George Bush was a bad President, but he did have class compared to the Chicago style.
Decorum, in case you forgot in your rush to criticize the President of the United States, is a family value.
President Obama called out the purveyors of the the lies and myths about healthcare reform for what they are. I heard a conservative blowhard assert that illegals would be covered under healthcare reform even has the that specifically stated that illegal aliens would receive healthcare coverage was read to him. The GOP is the party of willfull ignorance.