You might recall that Barack Obama speech to Congress, about the Affordable Care Act, a long long time ago, when Barack Obama had no grey in his hair. Oh, yeah, and when South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" after Obama said the ACA would definitely not provide health insurance for illegal immigrants. It's pretty much the only reason anyone outside South Carolina still remembers Wilson's name, and even then, half the time people aren't sure whether it really happened or if it was just something Tom Hanks's soccer ball hallucinated in that one movie.
Welp, wouldn't you know it, eight years later, ol' Joe Wilson's holding a town hall at Aiken Technical College in Graniteville, South Carolina, and when he was up on the stage, his own speech got drowned out by unruly protesters booing and chanting guess what? Haha, we are joking! They didn't chant "Guess what?" at all -- they chanted "You lie!"
The Charleston Post and Courier notes the "You lie!" chants erupted when Wilson, who voted against extending the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, tried to assure the crowd he's nonetheless a big fan of protecting women from violence, insisting, "I've also supported the local solicitor here, and the solicitor in Lexington all efforts to make sure that violence against women is fully enforced."
(We believe he might have meant "laws regarding violence against women are fully enforced," rather than "violence against women is fully enforced." OR MAYBE HE DIDN'T!)
One woman who attended the town hall, Dana Phillips, said she wouldn't have moved to Graniteville if she'd known in advance her congressional representative would turn out to be "the man who stood up in Washington DC and yelled at our former president," although she did appreciate Wilson's willingness to show up and hear his constituents let him know what they thought.
Wilson's answer to a question about the bombing of Syria -- he was all for it -- was mostly drowned out by boos as well; he'd told reporters before the event that he was "very pleased by the president's response" to the attack on civilians with sarin gas, adding "And I would have supported the prior president if he had acted, but he didn't." You know, because what Obama actually did was to ask Congress to authorize the use of force against Syria, which the Republican Congress and Joe Wilson refused to give him. But bygones!
Still, apparently all the yelling was good not just for the crowd, but also for Wilson, who said he plans to hold more events with the public:
"I always learn a lot," he said of the town halls.
OK, now that's just a baldface lie.
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[ Post And Courier ]
As a matter of fact, it does.
Canned ones?