I don’t care what or how you express an opinion privately, but we should not let that particular forum be turned into a circus.
There should be a follow-on policy to Mr Wilson’s recent rudeness: Disrupt a presidential speech and you are escorted out on your ass on the spot. I rather wish Mr Obama would have dismissed him out at the time but I realize the President was probably too nonplussed.
Wouldn’t this thoroughly disrupt the proceedings and make an instant martyr out of the brave maverick who dared speak his mind only to be repressed by the president’s jackbooted thugs?
I thought it was uncool, but then again, the British are far more–passionate? entertaining?–in the video I’ve seen of some of their proceedings and addresses. I rather like that people are being truer to their emotion rather than being All Formal and Stuff, but then again, heckling the president?
Eh, why not.
Jack Wilson is a sitting member of Congress. Barak Obama was only a guest there. The proper thing would have been to have him escorted out by Nancy Polosi’s jackbooted thugs.
Nope.
This causes a much bigger disruption than the actual event.
Even if he had committed an actual crime, he could not be arrested while on the floor of the Congress (US Constitution, Article 1, section 6). And calling the President a liar is not a crime – that whole Freedom of Speech thing.
Our Congress is NOT the British House of Commons, where a certainamount of sniping seems to be normal.
Wilson was being a dick. I would have noproblem with Congressional bailiffs escorting him out than I would to ushers throwing a noisy drunk out of a movie theater.
To be fair, I believe that calling the speaker a liar is in fact not allowed in the (admittedly more boisterous) House of Commons, either. Having trouble coming up with a cite, though.
How, er, boisterous do they get? It sounds pretty ugly sometimes with cat calls and such, but I can’t understand British folks when they are speaking, let alone screaming. 
Agree that this would just make a bigger spectacle and make the asshat an even bigger hero for his supporters.
Was Pelosi being a disruption when she popped up like a jack-in-the-box with applause after every 3rd sentence? It’s OK to loudly agree with the President but a sin to disagree? Has congressional applause replaced congregational amens to a preacher-president’s sermon?
The Capital building is not church. Members of Congress have always hooted and hollered their displeasure when a President strays too far from the bully pulpit. Wilson hooted out of turn and this was a far cry from the displays of incivility seen in other parliamentary procedures. This happens all the time in the house and the idea that a President’s speech is immune to any form of reaction is pure fantasy.
This was not an address to Congress in the same vein as a state of the union address. The President was not invited to speak, he invited himself to a captive audience of elected officials who could not debate the subject directly. All they could do was cheer or jeer. Wilson’s mistake was not what he said, that is his job. By doing so he brought to light an issue which the house is now addressing. No, his mistake was one of protocol for which he should be held to the same standard of every other political blow-hard in the house.
Anyone disruptive in the gallery would have been thrown out.
There were reports that in the British House of Commons one dude was thrown out twice for something similar to calling Thatcher a liar.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
You’re seriously equating applauding when the President pauses for applause with yelling “You lie!” when he’s speaking?
Cite?
Wrong. If Wilson were a member of Parliament, he would have been disciplined promptly for his action.
That’s the point of a speech. And somehow, I don’t think members of Congress objected to having the President speak, unless they’re as [deleted because of GD] as you.
If Republicans did not want to hear from the President on health care, they could have (a) objected to, or voted against, H. Con. Res 179, which passed both the House and Senate on September 8, and called for a joint meeting of Congress “for the purpose of receiving such communication as the President of the United States shall be pleased to make to them;” or (b) declined to show up. As much as you wished it were so, Nancy Pelosi didn’t grab all Republicans members of Congress by the ear and frog march them into the House chamber.
And Wilson did not hoot. He called someone a liar. If he were in friggin’ Great Debates, a mostly-anonymous Internet message board, a moderator would have told him to knock it off. But he wasn’t on the Internet, he was in the goddamn House of Representatives. If he wanted to shout his displeasure, he should have held his tongue until he could join the tea bagging protesters who are outside the Capitol this weekend.
More’s the pity, says I. The Brits, with their catcalling and funny wigs, have a much more entertaining political system.
But the funny wigs wouldn’t really work for us anymore. I suggest catcalling and superhero costumes for all members of Congress.
I agree, something like the costumed crocs in Pearls Before Swine.
Oh, I’m happy to let each member of Congress choose their own superhero identity. I think it’d be pretty telling.
I’m glad Wilson did it; he showed the entire country exactly where he stands, and made the fact that he’s an obnoxious, ultra-right wing asshole as clear as a summer sky. Sure, plenty of…OK, all of, the Republicans are against President Obama’s health care plan, but how many of them are so passionately opposed that they would publically shout out, “Suck my fat one, you fucking, goddamn, chocolate-covered, candy-ass liberal liar! I got your ‘health care reform’ tucked in my trousers, fucker!” Not too many, I’m thinking, but I sure wish a few of them would.
I also liked it when former vice president Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to “fuck off!” It offered an honest, irrefutable glimpse into Cheney’s character.
I wish more representatives, from the left or the right, would do or say something obnoxious and inappropriate from time to time. It’s easy to hide who you really are and what you really believe behind a stuffy mask of bullshit manners and faux decorum. Outbursts, insults and cursing would help to clarify who our elected officials are on a much deeper level; once that brain-to-mouth filter is removed, we can see who we’re really dealing with.
I also wouldn’t mind a few of those Malaysian/Singaporean/Pacific Rim Parliment-style punching matches once in a while.