Unruly Mobs Organized to Prevent Healthcare Discussion

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The insurance giants and big pharma feel really threatened by the prospect of healthcare reform. Insurance is spending $1.4 million each day to fight reform.

As part of that effort, the right-wing is organizing “unruly mobs” to disrupt healthcare town meetings across America.

Unfortunately for them, the behavior is so obvious, so obnoxious, and so antidemocratic that reporters have noticed and written about it all over the country. Here are a few samples of the media coverage of the carefully orchestrated disruptions of public discussions.

The Post-Standard

“‘It was like he was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail,’ [one of the protesters] said. ‘It was a beautiful thing.’ Actually, for anyone who treasures a functioning democracy, where ideas from all sides are respectfully debated, it’s a pretty ugly development.” [RIP, public discourse?, Post-Standard, 8/5/09]

Herald Times Reporter

“He’s absolutely right. There’s no place for mob behavior in these kinds of situations, and it shouldn’t be tolerated. We always can agree to disagree, but shouting down an adversary won’t accomplish anything.” [Editorial: No room for mobs, Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter, 8/5/09]

SalisburyPost.com

“The protesters jeer, heckle, wave placards, shout over the speaker and carry on much like the student radicals of yore. Memos that have cropped up on the Web show that these protests are not intended to be any kind of dialogue but purely disruptive, preferably ending with the member of Congress forced to retreat. Videos of the demonstrations almost immediately appear on the Internet. The idea is to make opposition to health-care reform seem more widespread than it really is.” [Beware of staged disruptions, Salisbury Post, 8/5/09]

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