Friday, August 14, 2009

Health Care Listening Session in Hackensack August 13

Attended the Health Care Listening Session in Hackensack last night just to see what the scene is really like (curious with all the media attention they have been getting). Happy to report that the majority of the audience seemed willing to give everyone their chance to speak and Representative Steve Rothman did a good job of explaining a lot about what is actually being proposed.

The only real wierdness came from a few right-wing nutjobs, who were obviously there to disrupt but not add anything useful to the discussion. I must say they made a real good show of themselves - screaming non-sense (death panels!..) from the back of the room when reasoned participants were given the microphone. Somehow speaking in turn was too much to ask of these few participants, who were obviously egged on by the misinformation being spewed on conservative talk shows.

The most telling incident was when everyone was actually leaving the session and there was a woman ranting, at the top of her lungs "Obama is the Anti-Christ". It really showed the credibility of these people, who make great TV but are in no way representative of Americans in general.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I was there too. Pretty amazing to watch. Interesting that the speakers who actually worked in healthcare really saw the crying need for change, while the anti-healthcare reform zealots seemed to offer nothing but slogans they heard on AM radio.

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