So, I guess one could use the same 'logic' for the McCain/Palin Town Hall meetings too?
Can't have it both ways.
Or is it just more unfounded facts by those who dislike him?
Anonymous
Favorite Answer
Obama's town hall meeting sure was! There was no dialog. It was a slobbering love-fest. It was nauseating that they exploited that 11-year old daughter of an Obama campaign person to ask a "question." Like that was a real question!
The angry people are real. They are not plants. They are not pre-screened.
Shovel Ready
The White House admits that they handed out tickets. And the Boston Globe identified some of the participants as Obama operatives. McCain and Palin are out of power right now, so I don't know why you are bringing them up. McCain is a Senator, and is undoubtedly having town hall meetings in his home state, but I have not heard anything about anyone doing the kind of total pre-screening done by Obama at his meeting.
Anonymous
People who ask questions are always pre-screened...doesn't matter where
If you want to ask a question on live television, what happens half the time is an attendee asks you to state your question, and if you don't say something that they're ok with, they can reject your questions.
On news shows they often present questions from "people" in the form of playback. People record their messages and then the channel decides whether or not to play it.
In some political debates there were occasional questions asked from YouTube...they played a YouTube video...there's no way they'd do that without screening the question first
I don't know for a fact whether or not they screened people for the meeting, but it wouldn't be all that disenfranchising because all you have to do is watch a meeting for the other side to get the exact same thing only oppositely polarized.
I will say however that I personally have little doubt that they pre-screened the attendees of the meetings, maybe not to discern supportive or not, but in the least to weed out the people who simply will not behave civilized in the atmosphere of debate or in the presence of Obama.
Consider this, let's say the only people they bar from the meeting are all people who express their opinions with rage rather than discuss and develop ideas...I'm really not trying to be an ***, but judging by what has been going on lately, who do you thing is going to get weeded out? The people who genuinely want to understand the bill and would consider supporting it if they did, or the people who will never support it and will only ever oppose it and cannot bring themselves to change an opinion after learning new facts? What about people who are just plain racist or people who are just obnoxious with their opinions?
It would only be responsible to weed out people who cannot or will not be a productive contributor to discussion
I hope they weed people out. Not because I support the bill, which I don't Yet, but because if all we have in these meetings are people who think their opinions gain ground by applying greater volume or vulgar language, we're never going to get to a bill that i would be willing to support
adc53
Some of the people who attended explained that they had followed the rules by contacting the office of the officials in charge of distributing tickets and have received their tickects in the mail. What process went into checking their background or associations they did not know.
It is customary to screen attendees to official events where the President, any president, can be harmed for security reasons. So it was not surprising to see the happy faces behing the President.
Anonymous
I don't have information about the first one, but the most recent two were definitely NOT pre-screened. I have heard and seen interviews with many people who attended, and they all said it was first come, first serve. I tend to believe these regular Americans. One fellow named Randy who asked Obama a question yesterday said he had driven halfway across Wyoming to get there. He and many other questioners were definitely not "friendly" to health care reform.
On the other hand, Bush's "town halls" were not only screened but only people who had voted for him were allowed to attend, and people were even excluded if they wore t-shirts Bush wouldn't like.