Today Arizona Senator John McCain held a town hall in Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix in the East Valley that was once a sleepy ranching community, but in the 90s and later became ground zero for Arizona's growth-on-steroids housing boom. It tended to boom with families who veered to the conservative end of the political spectrum -- a nice, safe place for a Republican Senator to meet constituents.
Given Gilbert's right-leaning credentials, the former presidential candidate, war hero, and long-time Arizona Congressman probably thought he'd get a great reception, especially after his introductory 15-minute rant about Obama's mishandling of the economy. Naturally, the Senator blamed the S&P downgrade and subsequent stock market plunge on the Obama administration. Earlier in the day he had granted an interview with local TV3, where he said the same thing, and then he urged Congress "to respond to the will of the people." In both the TV interview and the Gilbert town hall McCain neglected to mention that nearly 80 percent of "the people" wanted revenues to be part of the debt deal.
So, if he was expecting a standing ovation today in Gilbert after he beat up on the Tea Party's favorite target, well, that didn't happen. This was not just a conservative crowd; it was an über-conservative gaggle of far-right wackjobs who were carrying over their pent-up town hall anger from the 2010 Summer of Hate:
U.S. Sen. John McCain's town-hall meeting Monday in Gilbert broke down into a shouting match at times as "tea-party" activists directed their anger and frustration toward the senator at issues ranging from his characterization of them as "hobbits" to the nation's sagging economy. Arizona Republic
At one point the shouting and finger-pointing got so out of hand that extra security was summoned, and McCain said to the 75 or so people in the audience, "If you are not courteous to your fellow citizens here, we're going to have to ask you to leave." Funny, I don't recall him saying anything like that in 2010 when the same ugly crowds were shouting at and spitting on Democratic representatives who were on the receiving end of the same mindless venom.
So, what were they pissed about today? A member of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party, Kelly Townsend, demanded that the Senator apologize for calling her group "hobbits" in his Senate floor speech last week. For a very brief moment the nation saw the old Straight Talker during that speech, but of course he wound that linear talk into a jumbled turd for Fox News the next day, claiming that he loves the Tea Party and his words had been misinterpreted.
McCain gave Townsend and the Tea Party goons in Gilbert the old "I'm sorry if you were offended" excuse, saying that he didn't really say what the whole world heard him say. Actually, I don't know what they're so upset about; he called them hobbits after all, not orcs, which seems more to the point:
Although not entirely dim-witted and occasionally crafty, they are portrayed as miserable beings, hating everyone including themselves and their masters, whom they serve out of fear. They make no beautiful things, but rather design cunning devices made to hurt and destroy. Wiki
As if Tolkein isn't fantasy enough, the town hall took an even more bizarre turn when some pin-headed mouth-breathers criticized McCain for not doing anything about the United Nations' "takeover of the United States of America by taking over our farms." These paranoid lunatics mentioned the UN's Agenda 21 as evidence of the conspiracy, and McCain's comment that the US would never allow a takeover did not sit well with them.
Now, Agenda 21 has been around for nearly 20 years. It's a UN vision for sustainable development, and most people who work in environmental policy are familiar with it. The US of course never signed the treaty, as is often the case with international environmental agreements, but that didn't stop Glenn Beck and other hair-on-fire conspiracists from blabbering that the document is part of the UN's One World Order:
BECK: Reading through the pages [of Agenda 21], it becomes clear "sustainable development" is just a really nice way of saying "centralized control over all of human life on planet Earth." [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/15/11] Media Matters
Yeah, "sustainable development" is another way of saying "centralized control." Why didn't I see that before? And Smokey Bear is really Hugo Chavez. I hope you'll have similar success at upcoming town halls, Senator. You helped spawn these hateful grubworms after all.