Protesting Too Much, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

This footage of a razor-sharp Tea Party protester confronting Congressman Grayson over the healthcare bill is another must see:

She also brings out the best I've ever seen of Grayson, who usually comes across as a smug blowhard. You rarely see such exchanges on cable news, of course. A reader writes:

I'm not quite sure that I understand your reader's point in the Dissent of the Day. Apart from the fact that the interviewees are articulating their beliefs and opinions without being coerced or misled into saying something stupid, the allegation of what amounts to a selection bias seems improbable on the face of it. I think it would be more accurate to say that the attendees of a Glenn Beck rally are a self-selecting crowd: given that they're fans of a mendacious demagogue whose every distorted - and often entirely fabricated - statement is part of a paranoid fantasy with virtually no grounding in reality, it's very hard to imagine that one would find many "thoughtful and intelligent" people present. Whatever few might be found certainly wouldn't be representative, so I'm not sure how this video distorts the dominant character of the rally's attendees.

This would be like objecting to a video of Insane Clown Posse concertgoers on the grounds that they surely can't all be so utterly tasteless.