Authors Note: This is a reprint of an article posted in Livingstontalk.com 3/30/2010. I'm just posting it here in the name of consolidation and shits and giggles. And the possibility of further adoration.
Last night was for me the most failed attempt at undercover reporting ever by a journalist of my caliber, and in case you're one of the unfortunate few unfamiliar with my writings, my caliber is seriously way high.
My mission: To infiltrate the political rally "informational meeting" sponsored by Howell Public School Board Trustee Wendy Day and her new ballot group organization, the Michigan Association for Health Care Freedom, apparently because you can put "freedom" on the tail-end of pretty much any assembly of words describing a political movement these days and it automatically becomes "for the people." Day, with the help of the 912 Liberty Tea Party Of Western Livingston County, Michigan (of Freedom), totally threw together this rally in about 48 hours, which possibly is about how long it took HPS Assistant Superintendent of Business Rick Terres to come up with a straight-up truthiness explanation for how this was really an "informational meeting" and NOT, I REPEAT NOT a political rally.
Plus, they are billing her for the function. So there.
I wasn't able to contact Terres personally for this explanation because I didn't find out about the political rally "informational meeting" until a couple hours before it started, but you can read about it here in the Livingston Daily's advertisement news story. About 200 people attended the event, which was held in the cafeteria of the Howell Public School's Freshman Campus.
Of course this was NOT a political rally because if it were, that would totally be against Howell Public Schools building use policy, which prohibits using school buildings for political activities, or so I've heard.
Listen here, people. Concerned citizen Wendy Day does not use her school board member clout to hold political rallys "informational meetings" in violation of school policy. What happened was this (as she explained to me after the meeting when my cover was totally blown -- but I'll get back to that later): a mass of people in Livingston County, following last week's national Health Care Reform Bill passage, suddenly became super curious about how to circulate petitions -- you know, any ol' petitions. They just wanted to know how to circulate them, ok? It's completely benign and legitimate inquiry about a process that all people are curious about from time to time, just like sex, or how those toothpaste people manage to get the toothpaste in the tube (By the way, toothpaste people: you cannot keep that secret under wraps forever. We will expose you.) Hence, Day and her Michigan Association of Health Care Freedom people all got together and decided to hold a rally meeting to explain to these curious crowd members how this petition drive thing is done. They were giving out information, ergo, "informational meeting."
"We're here to show people how to circulate petitions," she explained.
See?
Ok, so it's true that the petitions they were handing out to people at the front desk (for practice purposes, I can only suppose) just so happened to have her group's proposal on it to amend the Michigan Constitution in a contradictory way to the federal bill. This, in turn, would help to put up a road block against federal reform by forcing the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the bill, which most political experts agree is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars anyway since it's been tried in the passage of previous social reform bills and failed miserably. Don't worry though, I asked her about this too. She blabbered something nonsensical at me about her group not being subject to a "fairness doctrine" and I was all confused at the political speak so I changed the subject. I'm no lawyer.
Next, I shifted my piercing line of questioning to the topic of why there were no Democrats speaking at this completely non-partisan "informational meeting." It seemed only fair since we were strictly talking information here, after all, and Jack McHugh from the Mackinac Center for Public "Free-Market" Policy got to hold the mic and yammer at us for about 30 minutes about "pro-freedom" issues (there it is again). Then Sen. Wayne Kuipers from District 30 of Not-Anywhere-Near-Livingston County got to speak for another 15 minutes or so, giving us the Kuipers Bump for being "the first group to kick-off this ballot initiative" at this strictly "informational meeting," of course. Then, he was all, "We're not talking about seceding here," and I was relived because I've studied the Civil War in school, and it looks like it was pretty scary. Then, this one lady yelled "YET!" and I got all terrified again and wondered if any of these people were about to produce confederate-issued rifle muskets and proceed to march on horseback south of the Mason-Dixon line. Thankfully, they did not. Yet.
Maybe I'm just another member of the "mainstream liberal media" -- a phrase Day is clearly about as proud of uttering as she is proud of sporting that red jacket she clearly borrowed off Sarah Palin back in the campaigning days before she went all
biker bitch on us in her black leather jacket -- but I just thought it only made sense that, since these people got to speak, it would be only fair to give liberals the chance to indoctrinate us with their socialist agenda of Affordable Health Care for all People Regardless of Economic Status.
Then she pointed out that there actually was one (count them, one) Democrat in attendance who actually had the gall to vote for President Obama, and she was now helping to circulate petitions on behalf of the proposed state amendment against affordable healthcare. Ok, but what I was sort of getting at with my question was why there were no Democrats invited to, you know,
speak -- but whatever. Reminding me so much of that poorly under-reported political figure, Palin, Day responded that "The mainstream media gives enough information on the other side of the issue." If that's the case, the least she could have done was aired a YouTube clip of
Keith Olbermann crying on behalf of healthcare reform and throwing his notes at us -- such laziness, honestly.
Wardrobe was not the only thing Day borrowed off of Palin, by the way -- she also stole some of her rhetoric on the side (possibly from notes written on the shirtsleeve). Her opener had so many military references in it that I was all ready to storm the beaches of Normandy and kill Nazis or something by the time she was finished. See, this petition is more than just a piece of paper that people sign with fake names like "Donald Duck" and "Ben Dover." According to Day, it's "another tool in the arsenal" against fighting health care reform. Attorney General Mike Cox is more than just a
nervous coward man/possible co-conspirator who may have buried evidence that could have been used against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in prosecuting his alleged crimes. He's also some sort of metaphorical military general, "marching forward into battle." And as for you -- you liberal congress, you -- you "pulled the trigger" in your passage of health care reform, Day accused. Shame on you and your trigger pulling. Guns don't kill grandma -- death panels do.
Day reminded us in her closer of the importance of not allowing ourselves to become lazy slobs "to be lulled back to sleep by beer, and football, and American Idol," or other silly, mundane things, like, you know, being in up to our eyeballs in personal debt because "We will lose our country."
I just realized that I've gotten so worked up talking about how informative this
political rally "informational meeting" was that I almost completely forgot the critical part of this story, which was how my cover was completely blown in my attempt to embed myself at this event -- or whatever we're calling it. Like you, I was glued to my television/computer all last week just soaking up the craziness that seemed to be the tea-party rally in Washington. I was so convinced there was going to be brick throwing at this thing that I considered wearing a football helmet just for safety's sake, but then I realized that might render me conspicuous, so I decided against it. Plus, it's really hard to hear while wearing a football helmet, in case you didn't know. After hearing that some rallyin' tea-baggers
were hurling words like "nigger" and "faggot" at congressmen, and then
there was that one guy with Parkinson's disease who had money thrown at him in a fit of rage (Why can't that ever happen to me?), I told myself not to be surprised if I ran into some snarling angry people with AK's and devil horns under their white pointy hats or something.
As a reporter, I am always ready for anything as a matter of practice.
However, apparently I wasn't ready for anything anything because what greeted me instead were a bunch of smiling, nice people from where I used to go to church who were oh-so-happy-to-see-me. These were not just any smiling nice people, by the way. You see, I'm from Howell -- I grew up here, and many of these people at this event were the grown-ups who helped raise me into the person I am today, which is to say, a totally awesome person. There were no devil horns, no white sheets, and no AK's that I could visibly observe. They weren't even carrying paranoid or offensive signs, which was sort-of disappointing strictly from a photo-op perspective. I can honestly say they were happy to see me. In denial of some of their more fringe members, for certain, as I gleaned from the white-washing testimony of Glenda Brown, the leader of the 912'ers who spoke of her experience attending the rally (also someone from my church), but happy to see me nonetheless.
I must also admit that I didn't have the heart to inform them that I was indeed a member of that so-called "mainstream liberal media" there to expose them. Talk about your conversation killer, I mean, right? Instead, I just tried to sort of blend in, after which I moseyed over to Day to assault her with my liberal questioning, then quickly got the hell out of there when the meeting was fully over.
I wish I could say my realization that many of the tea-partiers are not just part of a political circus freak show, but are indeed members of my own social circle, that I now understand their position better, that I relate to it, but, as a member of the uninsured, I do not. I do not understand it, and I think that many others who are struggling to pay their medical bills out of pocket and would appreciate some assistance from Uncle Sam don't understand it either. My prediction is that, come election season, it will prove too fringe-y for the mainstream voting public to really accept, but we'll see I guess.
I'll tell you one thing I did learn at this political rally "informational meeting": I now know for sure how to effectively circulate a petition.
Mission accomplished, Wendy Day. I have a Palin-esque bomber jacket I'll sell you if you're interested.
Vyckie Garrison
Kim Brittingham
Cranky Cuss
Mary Ann Sorrentino
Adequate Parent
vanessa seijo
Salon.com
Comments