What’s beyond disturbing right now is this alarming pattern of town hall meetings over health-care reform metastasizing into anarchic shout downs. This ill serves both health care, the status quo of which is unsustainable, as well as democracy.
Maybe we should have seen it coming.
These are uniquely partisan, hardly nuanced times. Upon reflection, the town hall meltdowns, including the one in Ybor City that Congresswoman Kathy Castor attempted to speak at, have been presaged on so many fronts. Health care reform is simply its most high-profile, visceral vehicle.
We’ve seen the portents — from Glenn Beck’s ad hominem, “Obama’s a racist” slanders to Sarah Palin’s “downright evil” “death panels” tirade. We’ve seen the omens in a “birthers” agenda that harbors fears of an elected “Manchurian Candidate.” And we see it in rhetoric that is morphing from “socialism” to “Nazism.”
The signs are as manifest – and literal – as swastikas. Apparently one person’s messiah is another person’s Mengele. Suffice it to say, not exactly grounds for compromise and civil debate. Not when you now need metal-detectors for town hall meetings.
All we need is Howard Beale chronicling the “mad as hell…not going to take it any more” uncivil discourse.
And any wonder we now may have one of our own.
Indeed, a Brooksville radio host – with a flair for juxtaposing “Marxists” against good-guy, patriotic conservatives – is now a newsmaker for all the wrong reasons. Bob Haa of WWJB-AM 1450 even warranted a recent visit from the Secret Service. You can imagine how many times Hernando County and the Secret Service appear in the same sentence, but these are not normal times. Not nearly.
Seems that an on-air exchange between Haa and a listener included references to ammo, target practice and President Obama. Hence the Secret Service visitation. Haa himself says he doesn’t remember. And, inexplicably, there is no tape, says the station.
But Haa did say, in answer to a reporter’s question: “What if I actually had said that? So what? This is America.”
So it is these days.