Backlash meets Obey

[Alfster]

Long video, but watch the damn thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAlkfYczY4c

[Skirmisher]

This article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal sums up my feelings on this meeting pretty well.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=575944

Bluntness backfires on Honest Obey
Posted: March 11, 2007
--Mike Nichols



We beg and beg and clamor and pray for forthright politicians who will tell it like it is, say "no" to people's faces instead of acting like weasels and sycophants; and what happens when they do?

They get hoisted up onto "YouTube" and TV news runs a 10-second sound bite that makes them look crazy. They are labeled unhinged potty-mouths and forced to apologize for cussing or shouting in order to be heard.

Witness the overblown kerfuffle involving Congressman Dave Obey.

Obey has apologized for yelling at some anti-war activists the other day.

He was busted on tape saying "hell" three times, referring one time to "liberal idiots" and suggesting some guy trying to debate how we got out of Vietnam - something Obey knows a little about - was maybe "smoking something illegal."

His biggest sin, though: stopping in the first place.

Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and he's a little busy right now trying to end a war. The woman who stopped him in a hallway, Tina Richards, at first only wanted to know whether he had seen a "poem" by her son, who served in Iraq.

A poem? What the hell do I know about a poem? is what you'd expect a busy person responsible for billions of dollars and on his way to a meeting to say.

Not Obey.

"I honestly don't know," he replied, sounding tired, as anti-war activists taped him. "I'm so buried in appropriations bills."

Richards went on to tell him that her son had tried to commit suicide and it took six months to get an appointment at the VA.

Obey, who is himself a liberal Democrat but is not Bill Clinton, didn't emote with a quivering lip. He did, however, talk in a reasonably empathetic voice until the Missouri woman changed the subject with a truly baffling question.

She asked if he was going to be voting "against the supplemental."

That's shorthand for the supplemental spending bill on Iraq.

"Absolutely not," he responded, pointing out a somewhat significant fact. "I am the sponsor of the supplemental."

"To continue the war?" asked Richards. This is an irksome refrain for Obey, who has been targeted by anti-war protesters lately.

Obey, as he said to Richards, hates the war; voted against it to start with. Voting against the supplemental, he pointed out, though, would deny funding for things like body armor and veterans hospitals - which actually seems pretty germane to what she appeared concerned about in the first place.

Voting for it would set timetables for redeploying troops.

"We're trying to use the supplemental to end the war," Obey told Richards. "But you can't end the war if you vote against the supplemental. It's time these idiot liberals understand that."

Richards didn't like that. She later called Obey's mention of idiot liberals "really inappropriate."

Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, then accused him of using "the worst cuss words in the book," and called him "Dirty Mouth Dave," which (I'll just apologize for this right now in order to expedite things) seemed even more idiotic.

I'm not even sure "hell" is a cuss anymore.

It's just where we're headed if people like Dave Obey can't be blunt without having to apologize.

[Back]

People are too strung up on the liberal vs conservative thing. Obey is guilty of that here using the term “liberal” to define some radical fringe group when in reality its just common everyday people with no other agenda than wanting an end to this particular war.

I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it in the past though I have for a long time held the belief that we are all a little of both. Some more one way than others of course. For example. For myself I have conservative values about my own family life, but I am very liberal in accepting that others may have different lifestyles. My own values may seem liberal against the very extreme conservative values, but I believe in the atomic family like it or not. I am pro-choice (liberal), but I would not recommend let alone encourage anyone to have an abortion (conservative).

9/11 has put America in a very tough position. I feel the war in Iraq has made it even worse. No one has ever said “do not hunt down the terrorists or Osama Bin Ladin.” On that America and most of the world was united. Then Iraq comes out of nowhere. Not even remotely related, unless by proximity (and by proximity we are talking one huge ass part of our planet), yet as we know now fabricated for who knows what end.

As a result America is fighting two wars. And it sucks. Troops are on the ground in Iraq and we are fighting over this here at home. I PM’ed Ben the other night after he tried to calm me down from responding to very personal attacks against my character over my political views and told him I felt like we were almost back into a Civil war sometimes. That is a place we can never go again for the survival of America.

-----------------------------------

I’m actually impressed with this post, Alfster, and thank you for posting it with myself in mind. I had not seen it before but I am confident that Obey and the rest of the people who were elected, regardless of political or lifestyle viewpoints, are working to find more solutions that benefit us than trying to tear us apart.

[Alfster]

The saddest thing about this whole video is the lady and guy who stopped Obey have no idea how dumb they look. I'm assuming that the person videotaping is their friend/supporter.

[Sean of the Thread]

They looked and sounded like complete idiots. I'm in agreement with OBEY.. and he shouldn't have to apologize for hurting two ignorant hippies feelings especially when they baited him to make a political propaganda video.

Isn't there a no camera rule there? I don't know I'm just curious if anyone else does.

[Nieninque]

The camera was clearly hidden in a bag or something...you can tell from the angle and the way it was pointing at the floor when they first started talking to him.

I think he was sound (Obey). He obviously feels passionate about what he is fighting for. He knows his stuff and unsurprisingly gets a little pissed off when a couple of armchair politicians come along and tell him he doesnt.

Fuck 'em.