Starting Points: Joe Wilson

Sep 18, 2009

The Right's Fringe Festival - Nation

By Sebastian Jones

September 16, 2009

AP Images
Demonstrators holds up banners during the taxpayer rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, Sept. 12, 2009.

This Saturday, some 70,000 people marched through downtown Washington, DC. Organizers of the "Taxpayer March on DC" crowed on their website that "thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans" took to the streets because they've had "enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and soaring deficits." Pretty straightforward, bread-and-butter economic conservatism, right?

So imagine my surprise when, having just arrived at the march, I saw a thin, tall, bearded fellow with a boonie cap jogging up Pennsylvania Avenue shouting "White Power!" A few people looked around awkwardly, not sure how to react, but mostly the crowd just moved along. Why wouldn't they, after all, when just a few paces down the road an elderly man was showing off his "McCarthy Was Right!" sign, or when numerous placards compared the president to various genocidal tyrants, or when the most common mass-produced poster (courtesy of an antiabortion group) demanded that we "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"?

This was only a sampling of the hateful language on display at the rally, which was only tangentially about taxation. More accurately, the event was a FreedomWorks-organized, corporate-funded, Fox News-fueled celebration of every conservative political and cultural cause of the past fifty years. Milling around the crowd, it was impossible to miss the references to issues as disparate as blocking investigations of CIA torture, promoting assault weapons and God "judging" America for homosexuality. Confederate flags were flown, Obama was told to "go back to Kenya," and so forth and so on. The crowd itself was almost exclusively white--and its members had come to get their country back.

Up on the podium, speakers put a more positive spin on the gathering; one actually echoed (with no sense of irony) a famous line from Barack Obama's stump speech, claiming the tea party was "not here to represent white America or black America. We're here for the United States of America." A more candid assessment came a few minutes later, however, when a singer took the stage and summed up the America those gathered at the base of the Capitol pined for. She was a "proud Christian American," anticommunist and Bible-believing. In fact, the most common rallying cry--beyond "You lie!" and "Can you hear me now?"--was that protesters wanted their country back, their republic restored. A country, one could only assume, that resembled the crowd.

One of the most popular memes on display was veneration of Joe Wilson, the South Carolina representative who interrupted the president's recent address to Congress by shouting "You lie!" In this crowd, it was "Joe Wilson for president." The man had done a courageous thing, with many accepting his inaccuracy about illegal immigrants getting government-funded healthcare in Obama's proposed plan as fact, and even more suggesting he ought not apologize for breaching the rules of decorum. Instead, Wilson was a hero to be congratulated. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, Wilson was opposed by 68 percent of Americans for his outburst, according to a USA Today/ Gallup poll. A mere 21 percent supported Wilson--but those at Saturday's tea party fell into a subgroup of that number--the 6 percent who told pollsters they were "thrilled" by Wilson's actions.

While much of the rhetoric and ideology was recycled, the event was different and more successful than past efforts thanks to the dual involvement of corporate interests and Fox News. For example, parked on the edge of the National Mall was the "American Energy Express," a bus on a "town hall tour" launched by the American Energy Alliance (AEA), a recent outgrowth of the Institute for Energy Research, a conservative think tank that has received funding from ExxonMobil and Valero Energy. AEA's director is a former registered lobbyist and Tom DeLay staffer, while other alliance employees have Republican Party and oil industry connections.

Fox News, perhaps the most vociferous anti-Clinton advocate in the late 1990s and Bush-booster over the past eight years, had parked its mobile unit just a few yards away from the Energy Express, and a small crowd had gathered around with supportive signs. Throughout the day, I met people who complained bitterly about the lack of media presence, about the "Communist Broadcasting Service" and the "Communist News Network." But the crew members from Fox News were heroes, and the greatest hero of all was Glenn Beck. For them, Beck was the only truth-teller among the communist infiltrators, exposing the sinister work of ACORN, the Czars and FEMA "death camps." Sure, FreedomWorks had organized the event, but Beck had selected the date, hoping to "bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001...united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created."

During the event, Matt Kibbe, a FreedomWorks organizer, went onstage to announce that ABC News had estimated the crowd in attendance to be 1 to 1.5 million strong--a claim which Michelle Malkin and other conservative bloggers inflated to 2 million by day's end, and which ABC News took the rare step of denying. Looking at the assembled crowd, this was a truly insane claim to make: the masses hardly stretched past Third Street; 1.5 million would have covered an additional ten blocks.

Yet, as I walked around after Kibbe's announcement, I heard people coming up with even higher numbers. "Two million, at least," one man shouted into his phone. Another, borrowing a phrase from Beck, proclaimed, "We really do have Washington surrounded!" Online, pictures of old rallies (missing buildings that are currently on the Mall) were distributed as proof the mainstream media was downplaying the real crowd and widely reposted on conservative blogs. Glenn Beck went on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning and claimed that 1.7 million had assembled, citing a "university study" from a university he was unable to name. On the train home, the protesters sitting around me were in a celebratory mood--they felt they had assembled an impossibly large crowd and brought their message to Washington in an unprecedented manner. The politicians had no choice but to listen, to ax climate change legislation, to stop healthcare reform, to give them their country back, they said. There's no harm in this illusion, really, so long as it is clear that it is only the reactionary fringe that harbors it.

About Sebastian Jones

Sebastian Jones is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC

Sep 15, 2009

'You Lie!' Shout Brings Vote on Sanction - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

Racial Issue Simmers as Black Democrats Lead Push Against Wilson

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 15, 2009

House Democrats plan to formally reprimand Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) on Tuesday for his outburst last week in which he accused President Obama of lying about proposed health-care legislation.

The vote on punishment will resolve the issue in the House, but behind the incident some see a broader question: Is racism a factor in the way the president is being judged?

With two simple words -- "You lie!" -- shouted during Obama's speech to Congress, Wilson helped escalate an issue that has been on a slow burn for weeks, especially among African Americans. Many watched the rancor at last month's town hall meetings with suspicion that the intense anger among some participants -- including signs calling for Obama's death and a movement questioning his citizenship -- was fueled by the fact that a black man sits in the Oval Office.

Led by their most senior black lawmakers, House Democrats decided Monday evening to hold the vote. The decision risks escalating the partisan warfare that has erupted since Wilson's outburst.

A vote would reverse the initial sentiment voiced by the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that it was time to "move on" to the debate on health-care. But the White House and Pelosi yielded to senior black Democrats, led by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), and other members of the leadership team, who argued that Wilson's remark was a breach of conduct that must not be tolerated.

Clyburn has said behind closed doors that many black voters saw Wilson's actions as part of the heated rhetoric from conservative activists whose protests, including one on the Capitol grounds Saturday, have included depictions of Obama as Adolf Hitler and the comic-book villain the Joker, according to those attending the meetings. It was one thing to have such remarks at town hall meetings during the summer recess but completely different during a presidential address to a joint session of Congress, Clyburn and other black Democrats argued, and Democrats needed to stand up for the nation's first black president.

Clyburn has not publicly called Wilson's remark racist, but he told reporters immediately after the speech that Obama is the only president to have been treated in such a manner.

Some black lawmakers were more direct.

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), who received hate mail from constituents during Congress's August break, said Wilson had just returned from the rowdy town hall forums at which the most heated accusations were leveled at Obama.

"I think he was caught up in a moment. The issue is: Would he have done that if the president were white?" Scott said, adding that few Republicans opposed the "level of rhetoric" against Obama in August. "We've got to realize racism is playing a role here. I'm hopeful that this will be a wake-up call for us to get it off the table."

Democrats emphasized that it was not just members of the Congressional Black Caucus seeking to reprimand Wilson, and that a broad cross section of Democrats supported the measure, including Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). Hoyer had argued publicly that Wilson had to make a formal apology from the well of the House chamber or face some sanction.

But Wilson has refused to offer any apology beyond the private phone call he made Wednesday night to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. In a show of defiance Monday, the lawmaker was the first Republican to speak when the chamber opened for a round of brief speeches. Rather than apologizing, Wilson hailed the "patriots" who attended his August town hall forums and opposed a "government takeover" of the health-care system.

Republican leaders rejected the accusation that there was any racial tinge in Wilson's comments and instead accused Democrats of using the issue to play to their base of liberal activists, who have funneled more than $1 million in contributions to Wilson's likely opponent next year.

"Representative Wilson has apologized to the president, and the president accepted his apology," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). "Last Thursday, Speaker Pelosi said that she believed it was time to move on and discuss health care. I couldn't agree more."

Senior aides in both parties expect the resolution to pass largely along party lines. The vote will officially be on what the House calls a "resolution of disapproval," the mildest form of punishment. Democrats cite rules of debate that prohibit lawmakers from "unnecessarily and unduly exciting animosity among its members or antagonism from those other branches of the government."

Republicans said Monday that they are not likely to offer an alternative resolution and that instead they want their members to focus on the content of the health-care proposal, as Wilson did in his brief remarks. But some Republicans came to Wilson's defense, accusing Obama and Pelosi of going back on their statements to move about moving beyond the controversy.

"What's it called when somebody says something they're going to do, and then they don't do it? What is that statement?" Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) asked in a floor speech.

After Obama's speech, the initial "macro view" among top Democrats was that he had finally broken through the noise of the town hall meetings and the alleged distortions of the legislation, according to one senior aide who discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. Democrats, the aide said, did not want to get distracted from the policy debate, as they had earlier in the summer after Obama's prime-time news conference on health care ended with his controversial comments that police had acted "stupidly" in deciding to arrest Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor, outside his home after police responded to a call about a possible intruder.

"It's time for us to talk about health care and not Mr. Wilson," Pelosi told reporters Thursday morning, echoing a similar statement from Obama, who suggested that "we all make mistakes."

But that morning several members of the black caucus stood up at a gathering of House Democrats to argue that Obama was being treated differently than any president, according to those in attendance. They argued that the image of a white Southerner calling the nation's first black president a liar on television on the House floor could not stand with a private apology.

During a series of roll-call votes Thursday, Clyburn implored his fellow South Carolinian to make a formal apology, as did Boehner and other Republican leaders, who had initially rejected Wilson's comment to Obama as inappropriate. But Wilson rejected the entreaties.

Clyburn, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in Congress, took the position in a leadership meeting Thursday afternoon that Wilson had to be punished, according to a handful of those in attendance.

Clyburn has served as a leader on racial matters. During last year's hard-fought Democratic presidential primary contest, he criticized former president Bill Clinton when he thought his comments about Obama's victory over his wife, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the critical South Carolina primary were racially disparaging toward Obama.

Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), another black lawmaker, said the action was warranted not "because he's the first black president" but because Wilson broke the rules. But Meeks said that Wilson's charge was borne of that sentiment from the town hall anger. "You've never seen those kinds of signs and that kind of language used before," Meeks said. "You didn't see that same kind of language with past presidents."

But some Congressional Black Caucus members were hesitant to give Wilson too much attention, suggesting that a reprimand plays into the Republican hands. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), a past chairman of the group, said, "I don't want this to distract from what we are doing, because that's the danger."