I bet you were anticipating another anti-Pelosi rant, weren't you? Well, not this time. Today when I saw the Drudge headline that "Pelosi/Hoyer call townhall protesters 'un-American,'" I figured I probably had my next Loony Left-Winger of the Day (Pelosi provides a lot of great material for that feature) and clicked to the story. Turns out that she and Hoyer (in an op-ed in today's USA Today) instead said "drowning out opposing views is simply un-American" -- targeting the behavior of those protesters who have tried to shout down the politicians without given them much of a chance to speak. That seems to me to be a far cry from saying that the protesters at these events, as a general matter, are all "un-American."This is why one has to take anything seen on Drudge and Fox News with a grain of salt. (FoxNews.com had a similar headling stating, "In a tight spot, Pelosi calls health care critics un-American"). Those websites come at you from a right-wing slant (yes, just like such outfits as MSNBC, ABC, CNN, CBS, New York Times, etc., hit you with a left-wing slant). In this instance, the headlines used by Drudge and Fox News were downright misleading, at least in my view. And I would expect that plenty of repub politicians are putting a similarly misleading spin on this today as well.
To address the substance of what Pelosi and Hoyer actually said: I don't agree with it on its face, but it doesn't outrage me. As stated previously in this space, I don't think shouting down politicians as they try to speak accomplishes anything. I would agree that such behavior is inappropriate and uncivil. But does it rise to the level of being "un-American"? No, I think that's a gross overstatement. Sometimes we all get angry. Sometimes we all lose our tempers. Does that make all of us "un-American"? I think not.
Finally, I note that while I might not have been outraged by the statement, I do think it was pretty dumb politically (see linked Politico blog). Using the word "un-American" in any context related to the townhall protesters just gives repubs something they can spin in the same way that Drudge and Fox News did. A similar observation with respect to protesters who engage in the "shouting down" behavior: That just gives the far left material that they can spin into their propaganda. To close, I'm sorry again not to use today's statement to go on a Pelosi rant. I'll leave that to the republicans.
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