House Votes to Punish Wilson for Outburst

Keith Olbermann's commentary on Joe Wilson's outburst.Today the house passed a vote to punish Joe Wilson for his out burst during President Obama's speech on health care earlier this month. The “Resolution of Disapproval” won a strong majority with a vote of 240 to 179, which is not surprising given the out rage that was caused over the incident. The vote included 7 Republican supporters in favor of the resolution.

The offense occurred earlier this month, when President Obama delivered a powerful speech on health care reform and the need to put the bipartisan “games” aside to do the work for the American people. To the shock and disappointment of many watching during the joint session of Congress, Joe Wilson, a Republican Representative from South Carolina, in a shameful show of mockery shouted out “You Lie” at the President as he told congress, and all of the world watching, that the health care reforms that he was proposing would not cover those individuals who were in the country illegally.

Speaker Pelosi and others on both sides of the fence had demanded an apology from Wilson for the break in decorum and the offense that it was, not only to the Office of President and the institution of Congress, but to the American people as well. An apology that Wilson refused to give.

While Wilson had at one point apologized to the President directly, and privately, he then seemed to have second thoughts and instead used his blatant disrespect as a rallying cry for support against the “liberal attacks” and referring to his outburst as “poor timing”.

Congress and a lot of America took it as much more than poor timing; however, and many were calling for a much more severe punishment. It is worth noting that today's vote was the first time in over 220 years that the house has voted to punish one of its members in such a fashion which should be fair indication of just how offensive his remark was considered to be.

As this video clip from Keith Olbermann points out, there is a blatant, even childish lack of respect for the Office of President coming from the GOP and conservatives. Whether you agree with President Obama or not, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, Barak Obama is the duly elected President of the United States of America and as such, if for no other reason, deserves a basic amount of respect and civility. We saw the same sort of attitude during the election when political rhetoric and character assassination began an all time low but the elections are over and the American people have spoken. To attempt to delegitimatize the President and his office is to disenfranchise the overwhelming number of Americans who, by majority, chose this man as their next president and disagree with their choice or not, that is, after all, how a democracy works.

Some have argued, that beyond basic respect there are also other issues, such as racism and the ever growing tensions of the culture war fueled by the southern mentality that still can not accept that they lost the war and who still see the North and the Federal government as the enemy. There is certainly a lot of validity to these arguments. But the bottom line is that by this point, it would behoove the GOP to concede the elections and learn how to behave like mature adults instead of rabid dogs.