Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

So let’s talk about the Tea Partiers.

Foley’s First Rule of the Media, as I wrote back when discussing why single-payer did not get more press, is “It feeds on stories about conflict… It feeds on the new and surprising… When something meets our expectation – like a grassroots single-payer movement trying to influence health care reform – it tends to get ignored.”  So it is that a town hall with a member of Congress where someone tells a horrific story about getting denied the care they need because of cost – an event I have literally witnessed hundreds of times in town halls in mutliple states – gets classified as “meets our expectations.”  A town hall where people shout and disrupt the proceedings does not.  Are these disruptions new and surprising overall?  I suppose so, if for no other reason than they contrasts from the oh-so-visually unexciting visual of old white (predominately) guys sitting around a table adding amendments that we’ve been treated to for weeks.   Do they create exciting conflict?  Oh yes – they’re all about conflict.

Upon further reflection, I would add to that “So much so that they’re incoherent.”

Are these disruptive actions about health care?  Not particularly.  For one thing, the participants are virtually indistinguishable from the “Anti-tax” tea parties and the “Anti-Muslim/Socialist/Terrorist/Whatever they called Obama that week” crowds at Palin-McCain rallies.  And by the same participants, I mean both similar people showing up, and the exact same wealthy fat cats funding them (more on those guys in a bit).   A particularly telling moment comes on the YouTube video of the Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter town hall in Philadelphia – the same YouTube video that the billionaire-funded FreedomWorks proclaims to be “a must watch and a must emulate at town halls across the country over the next month.”  Go to 2:17 of that video.  A man begins telling the story of a loved one with congestive hear failure, and you know this is going to be one of those gut-wrenching stories that shows you exactly how messed up our system is.  Before you learn more, however, our erstwhile vlogger chooses this moment to end the clip.  In another clip, the same vlogger hovers over the crowd, singling out the disabled people who are attending with the comment, “This should be fun.  They’re bringing all these people in here to act like victims.  This’ll be great.”  Of course, every angry shout and roar of the crowd is dutifully, even lovingly recorded.

This is about health care as much as "Showgirls" is about the plot.

Is it about getting Senators and Congressman to answer the tough questions so we can hold them accountable?  Please.  The “Town Hall Action Memo” which is literally the playbook for these disruptions has no traditional “talking points” to lay out a position or an argument.  There are no principles, no attempt to personalize the issue, no numbers supporting that argument to cite.  Instead, the participants are coaxed to “clearly rattle the Rep and illustrate some degree of his ineptness to the balance of the audience.”  More explicitly, “The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up.”  That seems to be proven by the event with Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who explained, “I visited with these people for an hour, listening to their questions, trying to explain the plan, having their taunts, boos and so forth, like my colleagues, and only after they began making so much noise that no one could be heard did I decide first to try to visit with people individually.”

Let’s put it to the test.  Go back to that video on Freedomworks’s Web site.  After all the speechifying, the man’s question is, in a nutshell, “how can we trust you if you don’t read the bill you vote on?”  Some pandemonium erupts – mostly from the herky jerky cameraman, it seems, with only a few raised fists in the crowd.  But then Sebelius says, “If people say they haven’t read the legislation, then tell them to go back and read it.”  Specter takes a swing at it and, amidst the boos, proclaims, “Every bill is read thoroughly and understood by me before I vote.”  And yet, the booing continues!  That’s apparently what should be emulated – continue booing even when they agree with you.

Is this about a popular uprising?  I believe the attendees are sincere, if somewhat incoherent, in their anger.  But it doesn’t represent a populist trend in the health care debate – as Jon Cohn writes about the latest poll, “While the public has its concerns about the plans running through Congress, people remain enthusiastic--extremely enthusiastic--about what Obama and the Democrats are actually trying to do.”

Nor is it serving ends that could be considered populist.  This is about wealth, privilege and power -- and the protection of all of the above.  Look, we know who stands to gain if health care reform fails.  Some will continue making money hand over fist, and others -- particularly conservatives -- will parlay this into political power.  So no one should be under any illusions about the financial backers who have helped goad these uprisings – and they are anything but populist.  FreedomWorks is governed by former Republican House, Majority Leader Dick Armey, Steve Forbes (who puts the “bill” in “eccentric billionaire”), and Frank Sands, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Sands Capital Management.  Americans for Prosperity – the business-funded anti-tax organization whose health care rally featured the local Congressman hung in effigy with the sign "Congress Traitors The American [and a word that looks like "idol"]” – is “a group that includes James Miller, a Federal Trade Commission chairman and budget director during the Reagan administration.”  Rick Scott – the man who made his millions with Columbia/HCA while having a hand in the single-biggest corporate fraud settlement in American history – is openly boasting of his hand in the chaos.

Is it any wonder then that somehow this all comes down to corporate taxes for some of the protesters – even though the corporate tax rate is entirely unchanged under Obama?  It's like the Tea Party in Lafayette Park in DC months ago, where the greatest threat to freedom was Sarbanes-Oxley -- a law that was created in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals to create transparency and protect investors.  Sure, the anger is real, but it’s hard not to see the strings being pulled.  As Jesse Jackson is fond of saying, "Well then how did that get into the middle of the agenda?  If your issues are cancer and Medicare and education and jobs and Social Security and decent housing, then how did someone else put their agenda in the front of the line?"

Watching these mini-dramas, I think Shakespeare said it best: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Look, I strongly believe in the spirit of civil disobedience.  It is the backbone of the American labor movement, the guiding spirit of the civil rights movement and, yes, an option that may be necessary for getting health care reform passed if the process completely stalls out in Congress.  (And before you ask, no, I don’t consider getting legislation past all 3 House committees and 1 Senate committee for the first time in history to be “stalling out.”)  The original for the “Yes We Can” chanted during the presidential elections was the “Si Se Puede” of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.  So I believe in civil disobedience.  I believe in freedom of speech.

I don’t believe in noise.  And I sure as hell don't believe in noise to protect privilege and power.