Reaping what you sow - Massa’s Honeoye Falls Town Hall News Round -up
OK, here you go local news/blog coverage. If I missed an article - add it to the comments -
D&C -A small three ‘paragraph space filler article - 500 people, questions for and against, next meeting Aug 26. Jane Sutter wrote as part of the Editoral blog, Civility rules, no other Rep hosting local town hall meetings, everyone was civil, followed by a list of quotes.
WHEC - the article details some back and forth between Massa and the audience - things like government is incompetent and infoormation not in the current bill.
13WHAM - A small article. Again the choice quote is an anti-government quote about government cramming “it” down our throats.
POLITICO - Finally the most lengthy article was that from Politico. It led with the “Pelosi Nazi comment”. A comment that didn’t occur until well into the meeting but the the rest of the article was about Massa trying to correct misleading information about the overall Health Care reform activities in Congress and this specific bill HR3200. No overt signs of astroturfing, the meeting WAS contentiousness and Massa kept his cool.
Fighting 29th also has some coverage - The meeting last night, thoughts on the news round up and the government.
Update: Phillip Dampier of stopthecap fame added his good word as well. The title? Theater of the Absurd.
Update II Jeremy Moule of City News adds his take as well - bottom line - Massa did very well.
OK, all that is well after you read those MSM articles ponder the words in the post title - “reap what you sow”
Both Ladkiddo and I wrote our initial impressions - she discussed “stupid questions” - I wrote about “ignorance.” The larger question is why do we have to deal with these things and why are they obstacles to getting what is needed - done.
How did we get here?
Speaking in generalities -
- How do we have people who abhor government health care yet say keep your hands off my Medicare
- How do we say that government can’t do anything yet it seems to put men on the moon, educate our children, protect us harm, and all that?
- How do people simply not understand that government consists of Local, State and Federal levels plus whatever special district they are in yet we expect Congress to “do something” about it?
- How could people not understand the economic system we have like duopoly for local broadband, Oligopoly or regional duopoly for Health care insurance. How do we call that Capitalist and not Monopolist? How do we not understand the the end state (desired state) for a capitalist is a monopoly?
- How do people not understand that government can be helpful, does play a role in our lives and is not the enemy?
- Finally how do people not understand that each and every person at that town hall meeting is directly responsible for the they government they get.
How? Well, the narrative in the media - the fostering of contention, the perpetuation of conflict and drama. Rather than educating, informing and true balance (I’m going meta here - beyond the few listed articles in this post) we focus on conflict and contention.
We are reaping the crop we have sown long ago and we are harvesting an uninformed and non-involved populace, and using right (or left) propaganda as substitutes for facts. Last night’s town hall meeting crowd was grown long ago.
We as a society need; no, must, to do better. We need active media that informs and educates.
</soapbox>
Related posts:
Interestingly enough, republican house members are admitting they are not holding public meetings during the recess in order to keep the focus on the orchestrated disruptions at the democrats’ meetings. Here’s my congressman’s “opt-out” of a public debate.
http://chrislee.house.gov/index.html
And they said Willy was slick…
Eric did wonderfully at the meeting - debunked many of the Screamers’ myths.
I actually live in Chris Lee’s district, and he is not going to have any live Town Hall meetings. He is doing “Tele-Town hall conference calls” instead.
Yeah, right. I listened to one of those last week. What a surprise - ALL the callers were against health care reform! Of course, my question did not get asked.
Gutless. He can’t face us.
If you live in his district, perhaps a phone call to the local office in Greece, 663-5570, would encourage the Congressman to answer to his constituents, like his Democratic colleagues are doing?
Should I assume you find Louise Slaughter gutless as well Jane?
On this I agree with whtwtrdud.
Slaughter should have a public meeting.
Nevertheless, your wrath should be directed toward the republicans, who as a group have decided to not have public meetings.
Where are the hypocritical “non-partisan” TEA baggers complaining about their represenatives not listening on that one?
Too busy adjusting the foil in their helmets?
I am sorry. It was inappropriate of me to call my Congressman “gutless”. I will admit I am out of sorts… I work in a medical practice and it is frustrating to hear our patients say “keep the government out of MY MEDICARE”, and when I log on to the local MVP website there’s a red notice “Tell your US Senator to vote against government run heatlhcare!”
I now realize that Congressman Lee is in Israel and can’t hold public meetings.
Still, I think it’s disingenuous to compare Town Hall Meetings with a teleconference that offers one-way communication and screened call-ins.
Oh, and on that call, Lee actually let a woman say “they’re going to let people on Medicare just die without care!” , and Lee said NOTHING to correct this ridiculous lie. He just went along with it and talked about their “fears” that Medicare will be drastically changed. Talk about fear-mongering…..
I wrote up my own views on the spectacle last night on my own blog at phillipdampier.com, taking a break from cable TV and tech issues for awhile.
I thought, in the end, it was the Theater of the Absurd. Massa was the big winner of the night, demonstrating he can effectively outmaneuver the talking points crowd, and, just by breathing through his nose, took out the mouth breather Glenn Beck rabble I got stuck near.
The stagecraft from the protesters was lousy, completely over the top, with manufactured outrage and inappropriately timed indignation (and the worst acting performance from that anti-abortion guy since Sophia Coppola in Godfather 3).
Wearing a white jacket doesn’t prove you’re a doctor - it proves you can purchase a white jacket at a uniform store.
There were perhaps three questions I heard all night that were not part of the theatre performance - one about mental health parity, one about co-pays, and one about how the bill is expected to proceed and its timing. Everything else was either respective sides reading talking points, questions and theories borne of total ignorance of what was in the bill (amazing that the protesters demanding that people read the bill apparently exempted themselves from that), misinformation, scare tactics, or bizarroworld socialism and other ludicrous rhetoric.
I doubt very much after it was all over that ANY person changed their mind about anything that happened last night. It was a staged performance for the media and cell phone/video wielding folks who will try and post their clips on various blogs and websites to supposedly illustrate that a town hall event really came away representing the true feelings of the district as a whole, despite the fact quite a few of those in attendance weren’t from the district at all.
Thanks Phillip for the tip.
Everyone” don’t forget to check out this other brilliant post on commonality of astrotrufing groups trying oppose net neutrality and Health Care.
http://stopthecap.com/2009/08/05/astroturf-groups-try-to-enlist-conservatives-to-oppose-net-neutralitys-government-takeover-of-the-internet/
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