Health Care Reform Hero: Joe Numbnuts Wilson

If a few months hence, as the new year and a new decade dawn, you discover that a health care reform bill has passed Congress — and if said bill has not been diluted to the point where only an insurance company CEO could find any value in it — you will have not Obama, not the Democrats, not even Teddy to thank. You will owe a vote of gratitude to Congressman Joe Wilson of SC, better known as Representative Numbnuts.

As everyone now knows, this GOP poster child for brain fart syndrome disgraced an already grace-challenged party by shrieking the L word at the President last night. No doubt faced with a John McCain stranglehold and the discomfiture of his fellow town hall refugees in Congress, Wilson immediately apologized.

But though you can pick up the turd that you squeeze out of the anus where others have brains, the smell remains for some time. The Republicans of both houses will be virtually forced to make amends — not merely for the golden, L-shaped pile of feces that Wilson gave them, but also for the signs and placards that GOP members waved around the hall. The only thing missing from the GOP side was a Representative with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder.

It’s all right to play an idiot on TV and even label yourself a clown; in television, inanity is business. But turning the floor of Congress into one’s personal toilet will tend to have its consequences, and the piper will come to call. And why wait till next year’s mid-term elections? Reid and Pelosi can simply deliver the bill now and demand their payment in either votes or silence. For real health care reform, the only thing better than Joe Wilson’s vileness would be if Rush and Sean and Glenn attempt the mildest defense of it. In any event, Jon Stewart’s writers are no doubt popping another bottle of bubbly as I write this.

The only question that remains is hypothetical: what would have been done to a Democrat who shouted the L word during nearly any of George Bush’s speeches to Congress, in which lies were indeed as ubiquitous as corporate money on K Street?

We’ll never know, but one thing is certain: somewhere in a dimension inaccessible to human sensation, the roaring, booming, rumbling laughter of Ted Kennedy is shaking the rafters, rebounding to the furthest reaches of his new universe.
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After posting the above, I found this piece at Salon, which comes to a similar conclusion. VoteVets and ActBlue has an action page for those who may be interested.