Doocy finds fault with "rude" Frank, not protester who compared Obama to Hitler
During the August 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy repeatedly defended a protester who claimed Rep. Barney Frank and President Obama support a "Nazi policy" on health care and held up a sign of Obama with a Hitler mustache. Doocy did not note the content of the protester's remarks, saying only that "somebody asked [Frank] a question," and criticized Frank's response to the protester as "rude," giving "attitude," and demonstrating that he might spend "a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people."
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At town hall, protester makes Obama-Hitler comparisons
From Frank's August 18 town hall event in Dartmouth, Massachusetts:
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy?
FRANK: Well, let me --
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Why are you supporting it?
FRANK: Let me -- wait, I will --
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: A real solution.
FRANK: When you asked me that question, I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?
[...]
FRANK: Do you want me to answer the question?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes.
FRANK: Yes. As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.
Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
Doocy defends protester against "rude," out-of-touch Frank
Doocy calls Frank's response to question "rude" and giving "attitude." Doocy, while discussing Frank's response to the Obama-Hitler protester, did not note the content of the Obama-Hitler protester's question, nor that she held a picture that compared Obama to Adolf Hitler. Instead, Doocy falsely claimed that Frank's "rude" response was to two different people instead of the single Obama-Hitler protester.
Doocy said of Frank:
DOOCY: Well, give him credit for showing up. But let's face it, he was downright rude. Somebody asked him a question --
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Smug.
DOOCY: OK, somebody asked him a question, then he said, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" And then to somebody else he said, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table." Barney, they showed up at the senior center in Dartmouth last night for some answers. Give them some answers, don't give them attitude.
Doocy sarcastically derides Frank as "sweet talker" and "[a]ttacking the same people who put him in office." In a later segment, Doocy played a cropped clip of Frank responding to the Obama-Hitler protester that omitted the content of the protester's remarks. Doocy stated of Frank's response:
DOOCY: Meanwhile, a health care confrontation like you've never seen before. Congressman Barney Frank starts attacking the same people who put him in office.
FRANK [video clip]: Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
DOOCY: Oh, yeah, he's a sweet talker. Is this really the way Democrats are defending their plans for health care -- referring to them as dining room tables?
Doocy says Frank's response shows that "[m]aybe ... he's spent a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people. In a later segment, Doocy again did not note the content of the Obama-Hitler protester's question and again falsely claimed Frank's response was to two different people instead of the single Obama-Hitler protester:
DOOCY: Well there were some extraordinary other sound bites that he had. At one point, after a person asked him a question, he said, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" And then he said, to somebody else, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table."
Maybe Barney Frank has spent a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people, because real people have real questions. And rather than answers, a lot of those folks up in Dartmouth last night got attitude.
Transcripts
From the August 18 edition of CNN's Larry King Live:
LARRY KING (host): Moments ago, Senator, Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts wrapped up a town hall meeting on health care in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Watch this exchange.
[begin video clip]
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy?
FRANK: Well, let me --
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Why are you supporting it?
FRANK: Let me -- wait, I will --
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: A real solution.
FRANK: When you asked me that question, I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?
[...]
FRANK: Do you want me to answer the question?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes.
FRANK: Yes. As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.
Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
[end video clip]
From the August 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): Here's the interesting thing. When he said that, you know, you live in a democracy, use your own individual initiatives, that's what people are doing. They are going out to these town hall meetings and they are voicing their opinions, so they should not be shouted down. As I said earlier, I do give him credit for holding the town hall meeting, because some politicians have walked away from these town hall meetings because they don't want to face the music.
DOOCY: Well, give him credit for showing up. But let's face it, he was downright rude. Somebody asked him a question --
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Smug.
DOOCY: OK, somebody asked him a question, then he said, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" And then to somebody else he said, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table." Barney, they showed up at the senior center in Dartmouth last night for some answers. Give them some answers, don't give them attitude.
[...]
DOOCY: Meanwhile, a health care confrontation like you've never seen before. Congressman Barney Frank starts attacking the same people who put him in office.
FRANK [video clip]: Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
DOOCY: Oh, yeah, he's a sweet talker. Is this really the way Democrats are defending their plans for health care -- referring to them as dining room tables?
KILMEADE: I don't think so. Is that rhetorical? I'm sorry.
[...]
DOOCY: Well there were some extraordinary other sound bites that he had. At one point, after a person asked him a question, he said, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" And then he said, to somebody else, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table."
Maybe Barney Frank has spent a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people, because real people have real questions. And rather than answers, a lot of those folks up in Dartmouth last night got attitude.
LOL I just did but it was running like his mouth.
And Douchey's Fox-style question, asking if this is how the Dems defend their policies, by calling people dining room tables, is hilarious even for Fox.
This is how adults should talk to idiots who waste their time. A little tough love. It happens at this site, usually followed by wailing about free speech, libruls not wanting to have a discussion, more right wing victimhood.
You have the right to free speech. If you use that opportunity to expose yourself as an idiot, others are free to use their first amendment rights to notice that you're an idiot.
Think of that last paragraph as sort of a Miranda Rights reading for misinformed right wing lunatics. Your right to remain silent is as sacred as your right to speak. Anything you say can and will be used to underline your idiocy.
How soon they forget.
Here's the video, about 2:45 in
"Oh, yeah, he's a sweet talker."
Oh of course, Mr. Douche, those who resort to visual and verbal Nazi references are just crying out to be sweet talked.
I refer you to thinkprogress.org. A Jewish man was giving an interview to a local tv newsperson explaining that Israel has good national health care and a woman off to the side yells "heil Hitler".
He later explained that 2 hours in the emergency room cost him $8,000 because he didn't have insurance. Then this Nazi woman did a mocking crying gesture.
This is what we're up against. And Doozy defends them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcRr5xA-K80&feature=channel
Her hubby has 2 1/2 jobs and no insurance, but she doesn't want health care reformed because she's afraid some Mexicans might take advantage of it (although she does care about illegal aliens. She says so).
I wish these people would spend as much time doing some reading as they do throwing tantrums at town halls.Of course, that would require a desire to learn something, and I just don't think it's there.
She has many issues. I hope this video gets as much airplay as the town hall pistol-packin' teabaggers.
Doocy needs to get back to his hopeless task of finding a friend.
She's able to hoist her Obama-Nazi picture up, but it looks like she realizes that's all she has. Probably her first excursion outside the Ditto-Bubble (or to Earth) and she looks a bit stunned, like a bratty child whose Dad finally says "Enough!"
What are they afraid of, offending these nut jobs? They'd never vote for a Dem anyway, so Frank had a great response to it. I wish more Congressmen and Senators had the guts to just call these people what they are - tools of the multi-billion dollar insurance industry. They're just too stupid to know it.
Maybe Barney Frank has spent a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people, because real people have real questions. And rather than answers, a lot of those folks up in Dartmouth last night got attitude.
Real people have real questions, huh? Funny how you don't bother reporting what the questions were. Or the fact that the crazy lady who asked him why he supported a "Nazi policy" cut him off the first 2 times he tried to answer her.
I know you're being sarcastic, Shaggles, but I'm asking sincerely- Why didn't Doocy report the crazy questions? They're probably considered perfectly reasonable to many watching Doocy for "news".
Or, could it be that even some of the Fox audience is catching on ? Is Fox getting so nervous about the imbecile monster they've created that they're only comfortable showing the reaction to it, and not the monster itself?
Mike Papantonio says something about your last point in his latest "Pap Attack".
http://airamerica.com/content/silence-golden
Aside from it being nothing more than an elitist, partisan smear (DOOCY is more of a real American than New York City firefighters??), no matter how ignorant, illiterate, bigoted, and uninformed some of these ranting numb-nuts are, simply by them living in a rural area their opinions are sacrosanct and more important than someone living in a high-rise.
It’s time to start calling the “Real America” canard what it is – BS! In simple fact, more Americans live in cities than on dirt roads – Deal with it! Doocy and the rest of media elite need to get that point slammed upside their heads EVERY time they spout this elitist garbage!
I live in Southern California, and by listening to am radio, and from right wing emails I sometimes receive, I know that Ca. is a go-to punch line for wingnuts. The Land of Fruits & NUts & Flakes, commies, homos, Hollywood. It's strange to think how many people in rural areas, especially the midwest and South, consider more populated areas alien boogeymen.
Not that one needs to travel that far. I recently drove from Portland to SoCal, through the central farming valley, and heard some of the same things about "L.A.". ( I consider myself fairly normal looking now, compared to my youth, but I'm still spotted as an outsider).
Funny thing is, in my younger days, a lot of my friends were musicians and artists, people with funny hair & clothes, tattoos & piercings before they were as common, weird ideas, and although I met a few crazies, they were by & large decent nice honest people. They were the type who would have terrified a lot of these "real Americans".
Most of my old friends have settled into very normal family lives with mortgages and kids, and are still nice, hard-working, smart people.
But these nuts at the town halls with the flags and nazi posters, and the trucker hats and sweat pants... they are scary.
If the health reform is so bad then why would they need to resort to making things up like death panels and cutting and pasting clips to smear Democrats in order to try to win the argument?? Maybe they wouldn't have to go through all the effort if they'd be more fair and balanced!!
http://www.psywarrior.com/Goebbels.html
Makes you wonder, who's acting like a Fascist - those supporting health care reform, or those twisting the truth to push their agenda?
The media (press) is regarded as the 4th branch of our government. We need to be as watchful of the media as we are of our politicians.
Must be they read "Rules for Radicals".
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
http://vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/rules.html
Pass it on.
INSURANCE INDUSTRY--->PROPOGANDA---->STUPID PEOPLE---->NO PROGRESS---> SLIDING DOWNHILL.
Comparing Obama to Hitler is offensive. Barney Frank obviously agrees with Obama on a lot of points, and I'm sure they get along fine.
Hitler however, would've wanted to kill Barney Frank for his heritage, his sexuality, and his political opinions.
I think the only thing that is really rude here (if I'm a Fox News broadcaster, who thinks Obama deserves to burn in hell), is bringing up Hitler when talking to a person of Jewish heritage.
I'll see your Inside the Third Reich and raise you William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Anyone with any significant knowledge of Nazism could not in good conscience compare Hitler to Obama, or the policies of the Nazis to anything that has come out of Washington during this current administration.
Ask yourself this simple question: Did Hitler's crackdown on dissent, persecution of Jews, mass execution of political enemies and beligerent foreign policy have anything to do whatsoever with any social policies he might have implemented to ease the terrible effects of the world-wide Great Depression?
Anyone paying attention knows that the last Bush administration was much closer cognate to Nazism. The way that Hitler held a metaphorical gun to the head of Central European leaders, was copied by Bush with his Saddam ultimatum. Additionally, the trumped-up rational that Hitler used to invade the the Rhine Land, Czechoslovakia, and Poland was recycled by the Bush Administration when selling the vaporous case for war in Iraq. I won't even go into the spying on his own citizens and the scapegoating of swaths of ethnic groups that both Bush and Hitler employed.
Thankfully, America has a much longer tradition of democracy and was able to restrain the fascism at the heart of Bush's policies. Germany had no such tradition and thus the people willfully ceded their power to Hilter, and the rest is as they say, history.
Idiots like that woman take up valuable time that could be spent talking about the issues. There isn't enough time at a town hall meeting to get somebody as confused as she is up to speed.
Frank did the right thing. Respect should be earned, and those who don't respect others enough to keep their comments in the rational world have no right to expect validation from those they disrespect.
Holding a picture of President Obama, with a painted fake Hitler mustache is not showing fear, nor is it an expression of fear.
It's an assinine attempt to be noticed. Like the 2 year old, banging their head on the floor, screaming to get attention.
ADULTS, act like ADULTS and are able to express their concerns and fears in an ADULT manner!
People who act like a 2 year old having a tantrum, screaming for attention, get treated like the 2 year old screaming for attention.
It's about d*mn time SOMEONE told these MORONS to STOP acting like 2 year old brats and act like ADULTS!!
You go Barney Frank!
Honest? Yes. Rude? Nope.
Frank: "Ma'am, that's a very good question. Millions of my ancestors died in concentration camps, and as far as I know, Obama isn't Hitler, but I'll look into it. Thanks for asking!"
Oh, and yes, way to provide context, Fox! I guess you'd do the same if a Republican were asked at a town hall why he supports the Third Reich and wife beating, right? Right!
The woman's boneheaded, idiotic question was clearly intended to provoke. Frank gave her what she deserved. She's a complete and utter moron who doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
It may not be a true report, you decide.
They still haven’t got any conservatives doing the whacky stuff. All libs or democrats.
Huh? Another infrequent visitor to Earth, in a string of mostly homophobic comments.
And BTW, failing to identify a "LaRouche Democrat" as a Democrat is like failing to identify a Gummi Bear as a bear.
of himself. IMHO the Left should use him as their example of a brain-dead conservative, instead of Rush, BO'R, Hannity, or Beck.
Doocy is as crazy as a $3 bill.
At Fox News, every day is opposite day, as demonstrated by their insistence that it was Frank who shouted down questioners. Again, they didn't even bother to watch the video, and they apparently haven't been paying attention to other meetings, where distractors continually shout down the discussion. Oh, and let's applaud the female counterpart's efforts to credit "some politicians" for holding town hall meetings in the first place, especially given the fact that Republican lawmakers have been virtually absent since they went on vacation. As I understand it, we have two parties that will be voting on this bill. What a complete and utter joke. Fox News is programming not even fit for a kindergardener, yet their audience is huge. Let's put two and two together, and welcome the end of civilized society as we know it.
Just so we are clear about "Nazism"
Nazism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nazism, officially in German as National Socialism[1][2][3][4] (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers to the ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or NSDAP under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.[5][6][7][8]
Nazism is often considered by scholars to be a form of fascism. While it incorporated elements from both left and right-wing politics,
the Nazis formed most of their alliances on the right.
[9] The Nazis were one of several historical groups that used the term National Socialism to describe themselves, and in the 1920s they became the largest such group. The Nazi Party presented its program in the 25 point National Socialist Program in 1920. Among the key elements of Nazism were anti-parliamentarism, Pan-Germanism, racism, collectivism,[10][11] eugenics, antisemitism, anti-communism, totalitarianism and opposition to economic liberalism and political liberalism.[11][12][13]
In the 1930s, Nazism was not a monolithic movement, but rather a (mainly German) combination of various ideologies and philosophies which centered around nationalism, anti-communism, traditionalism and the importance of the ethnostate. Groups such as Strasserism and Black Front were part of the early Nazi movement. Their motivations were triggered over anger about the Treaty of Versailles, and what they considered to have been a Jewish/communist conspiracy to humiliate Germany at the end of the World War I. Germany's post-war ills were critical to the formation of the ideology and its criticisms of the post-war Weimar Republic. The Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933.
In response to the instability created by the Great Depression, the Nazis sought a Third Way managed economy that was neither capitalism nor communism.[14][15] Nazi rule effectively ended on May 7, 1945, V-E Day, when the Nazis unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers, who took over Germany's administration until Germany could form its own democratic government.