Q & A
Posted at 8:25 am on Monday, March 30, 2009, in Uncategorized, and tagged maddow, mother jones.
I had a prepared question for the Mother Jones event. It went like this…
There are two families in Washington DC — a dysfunctional one (the Democrats), and a crime syndicate (the GOP). [Hold for laughter.] The dysfunctional family seats 250 people around the table, they fight in public and everyone wants to do their own thing, largely disregarding the family’s purpose as a whole. On the other hand, the crime syndicate treats the head of the table as a king, they insist that everything is always going according to plan, and any dissenters are drowned out. My question is, how do we take the steps necessary, to not only fix the economy, but to establish policies that ensure the long-term health and vitality of our nation, when the party that runs Washington — the party with the ideas that won the election — is dysfunctional?
Unfortunately, the question-and-answer session didn’t go according to plan, and the questions had to be provided on a 3×5 card at the beginning of the event. So I couldn’t exactly start my question by saying, “I have to admit, I speak with a liberal bias.” I truncated the question to the root core — How does the nation move forward with a dysfunctional democratic party? — written with one of those mini-golf pencils.
My question was not asked, but Rachel Maddow did seem to address it in a response to an entirely different question. In a question about politics being funny in the age of Obama (and not being able to ridicule Bush), Maddow said that she finds it hilarious that centrist Senate democrats found it necessary to create an anti-spending coalition now — in the midst of a recession. Really? It was a humorous moment, and it was basically the crux of my question.
Q&A sessions are always mixed (at best). There is a distinct element of targeting the lowest common denominator, since questions are gathered from everyone in the audience, or potentially so. One question from the audience asked Rachel what drink she would make for an historic figure. I forget the drink but she picked Abraham Lincoln. It was not the high point of the evening.
No related posts.