"Representative Heckler"-Special Comment: Congressman Wilson-by Keith Olbermann

[kpete]

Special Comment: Congressman Wilson
by Keith Olbermann

Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 04:17:39 PM PDT

In the fictional version of American politics in the first decade of the 21st Century, this would be cut as "too symmetrical," just as surely as an editor would insist you couldn't call your make-believe Congressman, "Representative Heckler."

We get one president who lies, non-stop for eight years, and the first time he truly gets called out for it, it is in the stodgy and very appropriate venue of the New York Times, by a man named Joe Wilson.

Then we get another president who tells the truth, often when it is to his detriment, getting heckled, in the least appropriate venue imaginable, in the chamber of the House of Representatives, by a habitually hot-headed Congressman also named Joe Wilson.

The invective, the flatullence-quality of the Representative's salvo, makes the gaudier story. But as I hope to show in a Special Comment tonight, the salient fact was that Congressman Wilson, and not the President, was wrong last night.

more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/10/780147/-Special-Comment:-Congressman-Wilson

[Barack_America]

1. Should be interesting. nt

[Staph]

2. My Congressman used to be Rep. Heckler...

Okay, his name is Ken Hechler, but you get the drift.

He was and is an amazing character. In WWII, he was attached to the 9th Armored Division when they captured the bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, and later wrote a book about it (The Bridge at Remagen). After the war, he became a combat historian, interviewing many of the Nuremburg defendants.

After his military service, he became a White House assistant to Truman and a research director for Adlai Stevenson's 1956 campaign. Ken was first elected to Congress from West Virginia in 1958, and was easily re-elected for eight terms. He was the primary architect of the Coal Mine Safety and Health act of 1969. He marched with Dr. King at Selma.

And this year, at age 94, he participated in a protest near mountaintop removal mining sites in the West Virginia coalfields in the Coal River Valley along with local coalfield residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune, among many others. He was one of 29 protesters arrested for trespass.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hechler