Many of you may have heard about or seen President Obama's town hall meeting on health care yesterday. It seems a few people in the media have become a little upset about the fact that the "open" town hall meeting wasn't really open at all. Every question was carefully pre-screened and every attendee was as well. Check out this video of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs getting a well-deserved grilling by the press on this:
There is no doubt that this has happened with every recent president, Bush, Obama, everyone. However, we haven't ever seen it to this extent. At the end of the video you saw Helen Thomas, who has been around the White House for years, comment that she has never seen anything like this before. What lends even more credibility to it is that this is the Obama press corps, the very same people who have followed him around and repeated his every word without question. The hypocrisy of it all is that Obama has consistently touted transparency and openness throughout his campaign and Presidency. It's fine if Obama wants to monopolize some time to talk about his health care initiatives, but don't do it under the guise of a "town hall meeting". A true town hall meeting would inevitable make him answer the tough stuff. We got absolutely zero new information out of yesterday's meeting. If it's a true town hall then we should at least get something valuable. Yesterday was the same old rhetoric that we've been hearing for weeks. Just call it what it is: a commercial.
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Robert Gibbs is embarressing. Why would Obama pick someone like that? to make himself look better?
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