There were two high-profile, shocking breaches of etiquette in the past week or so, both of which people need to generally chill out about at this point.
The first, of course, was South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yelling "You lie!" to Obama during The O's speech to Congress on health care. If Wilson was responding to Obama's claim that proposed health care legislation would not apply to illegal immigrants, he was wrong, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that it's generally agreed upon that one does not shout out interruptions at the President during a speech to both houses of Congress.
But here's the thing. The man apologized to the President, and the President accepted his apology. Fair enough! Let's move on. It's a sideshow at best, and Wilson's Democratic opponent has already benefitted. To keep this thing alive, by calling for censure and the like, is counterproductive. In fact, if you're a Democrat, it's probably harmful. Americans like the powerful to get taken down and be forced to grovel, but only to a point. Once you keep going after someone, sympathy starts to build. Can you imagine Joe Wilson as a sympathetic figure? Keep this up and it'll happen.
The second was Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards. It seems that young Taylor had just won the award for Best Female Video, when Kanye took to the stage and expressed his contrary opinion that, no, Beyonce should have been the winner.
(P.S. I saw Taylor Swift in the airport once. She's 8 feet tall and sparkles like rock candy. People went "Ohhhhh, Taylor Swift" when she walked by. I asked my sister who she was.)
Well, people were OUTRAGED. BOOOOOO KANYE!!!!!
Think about what that means. People got upset because one multimillionaire interrupted another multimillionaire during the presentation of a fake award for a music video on a channel that doesn't play music videos. Seriously, if this really upset you, I hope to God you're a 13-year-old girl, because otherwise, you have much better things to get outraged about.
I'm with Gawker. I think the whole thing was staged.
Nevertheless, I'm glad that at least we got this out of it:
UPDATE: Anna Pickard of the Guardian thinks the Kanye thing was staged too. Conspiracy theory gathering steam! Now waiting to learn how ACORN was involved.
dear Brittanicus, besides being factually wrong on many, many points, you also overstate the issue.
ReplyDeleteThere exists a provision that prevent people from getting Medicare if they are illegal. Those are de facto in place on all new health care legislation that is being considered.
And it works too. Last year states spent millions to root out illegals getting health care (!) only to find out that the savings were in the thousands (and actual citizens lost their coverage along the way).
So the assumption that all of these (brown - just say it) people are glomming of our wonderful health care system is on its face incorrect.
Also, your underlying point that illegal aliens, (who own houses, own business, buy things, create jobs, and provide services) are net loss towards our economy has NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN SHOWN. You know what has been shown, that they are a NET GAIN.
But I like your fervor, and with one two well-placed facts you could be on to something.