Foolishness surfaces with health care topic

I would like to respond to the article by Hans Washburn in the Nogales International Sept. 8 issue. Washburn responded to an article by Mary Darling and Manfred Cripe that urged people to take a step back from the rowdy protesters and find out the facts about health-care reform before discarding the possibility all together.

Washburn then claims that the Democrats are the ones responsible for the heightened rudeness and heated exchanges, that we did it on the same scale when Bush was president, and that we are following President Obama like zombies.

For his proof about Democrats’ zombie-like and obtrusive behavior, he cites that a few left-wingers wore offensive T-shirts and recalls the wild antics of the wild ladies at Code Pink. Washburn, ironically, delves into debunked Internet rumors himself in his attempt to claim the truthful high ground, not least of which are that Rep. Carol Shea Porter was removed from numerous town hall meetings and that Condoleezza Rice was physically threatened by Code Pink protesters. Simply not true in any way. Also, Camille Paglia is not a liberal.

What is true is that the ridiculousness of the right-wing about the health-care debate has taken astronomical proportions, and most of it is based on lies and ignorance. True there are harebrained ignorant people on both sides of the political spectrum, but I ask Washburn to show me a left-wing antic based on a lie that had dominated the 24-hour news cycles for weeks and months, not a Youtube video, but something that has reached the dinner table of most Americans.

What group of ours is as ignorant as the “birthers” who claim that Obama was not born in America despite mountains of proof? Which former vice-presidential candidate of ours has embarrassed themselves as much as Sarah Palin did when she claimed that Obama would put her parents and Down syndrome children in front of a “Death Panel?” Which untidy lady of ours showed the absolute depth of her ignorance by going on national TV to claim that she thought Obama was an Arab? Which large mass of lefties would hold up a sign that says something as foolhardy as, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” or “Obama is a Socialist Nazi?”

They simply do not exist because fortunately we don’t have a huge chunk of our base that simply refuses to absorb facts as just part of the greater conspiracy against America. Washburn claims that we are now zombies behind Obama, but the “grassroots” anti-health-care reform is funded by the health-care industry and multi-million-dollar lobby groups, who then go and tell people who would not know any better that this is Socialism, or that this is trying to get government control of health care. You have anti-health-care protesters in the crowds who have no health care! How does that make sense? Only makes sense if you are a zombie.

(Editor’s note: Woolfolk lives in College Station, Texas.)