Hellooooo Mr. Wilson

Last night as President Obama was delivering his major speech on healthcare reform to joint houses of Congress, including members of the South Carolina legislature. One of these fine young gentleman, Representative Joe Wilson, well let's just say he came down with a case of political touretts, being the condition where you yell out things during a presidential address while he is standing 50 feet in front of you.

President Obama was speaking about a clause in the health care bill that some have taken as saying that the bill will provide health insurace to illegal aliens, or 'the illegals' as some of us refer to them. This has been proven to be not true, but you know those hasty conservatives, they love to jump on false information and spread it like - well, false information. So, let's just say, to be fair, that the bill Obama is proposing may or may not offer health insurance to illegal aliens. Let's just give that one to the Republicans for now, the new question is - is it appropriate in any form to interrupt a President's address to the union.

I am sort of on the fence about this one. In the grand realm of things, yes, it is good manners to not interrupt a public offical, be it the president giving a speech or Paula Abdul explaining why she isn't voting you to Hollywood (when the meds wear off she will make sense, I promise.) While in the Senate chamber, while disagreements are allowed, most members of Congress know how to sit still and be silent or maybe clap while the President reads his remarks. Democrats were able to do this for all 8 years, that's right folks, 8 whole years of stupid W. speeches, anecdotes, confusing answers to questions, smirks, winks, giggles, looks of confusion. They behaved themselves that whole time, not one outburst - I think the only recorded Democratic outburst took place after Hurricane Katrina when Cheney went down to New Orleans to speak with reporters and some passerby told him to go fuck himself - and for all we know it could have been Chris Brown talking to Rihanna.

The point being, I don't feel that absolute decorum is as necessary in the chamber of politics as everyone else does. If you have ever seen the British House of Commons - occasionally playing on C-SPAN, you will see all types of interruptions, hecklings, boos, and what have you -and it's great TV! The Prime Minister gets up to his lecturn, and begins discussing the issues of the day, and then people in the opposing party yell and scream at him to shut up - and it's his job to talk over his opposition until they shut up or quiet down, whichever comes first. But it's politics at it's best, and it's a free for all. Most importantly, there are no physical altercations (that I know of), it's not in Japan where yelling leads to screaming leads to fistfights leads to caning, it's good old-fashioned yelling and screaming and telling your buddy across the aisle that he's a moron and he's unAmerican - sort of like Fox News here in the states.

But I digress. This whole 'heckling' of the President made me think about something. Wouldn't it have been nice, during any point of George W. Bush's presidency, if during any one speech, a member of the Democratic Party would have stood up or just yelled - "You Lie.?" I'm not saying it's appropriate or in conscious with good manners, but in this case, if someone had yelled that - they would have been right.