14 Things You Need to Know About Obama
Heckler, Rep. Joe Wilson
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on September 11, 2009, Printed on September 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142563/
South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was
pretty much a nobody until his
outburst Wednesday during President Barack Obama's speech to a joint
session of Congress and the American people on the subject of health care.
Here are some things worth knowing about Mr. Wilson, including his most
recent video appeal, at the end of this list, where he continues to
characterize the Democrats' health-care plans as "government-run," saying he
will not "be muzzled."
1. Like his ideological counterpart known as Mr. The Plumber, his real name
is not Joe. It's Addison. His middle name is Graves. That makes him Addison
Graves Wilson.
2. Dave Niewert, blogging at Crooks and Liars, reports that Wilson is a
member of the organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which " as the
SPLC has detailed assiduously, has been taken over in the past decade by
radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign
institution." (Not that his affiliation has anything to do with his
unprecedented heckling, during a presidential address before a joint session
of Congress, of our first African-American president.)
3. Wilson served as an aide to the late segregationist Senator Strom
Thurmond, who is credited with conducting the
longest filibuster in Senate history -- against the 1957 civil rights
bill.
4. When Thurmond's bi-racial daughter, fathered out of wedlock with an
African-American teenage girl, came forward in 2003 -- after Thurmond's
death -- Wilson castigated Thurmond's daughter, saying he did not believe
her story. Essie Mae Washington-Williams was conceived of a union Thurmond
had with his family's 16-year-old maid. Thurmond was 22 at the time. "It's a
smear on the image that [Thurmond] has as a person of high integrity who has
been so loyal to the people of South Carolina," Wilson said, according to
TPM. Wilson later apologized to Washington-Williams.
5. A large percentage of Wilson's campaign contributions come from the
health sector, according to
OpenSecrets.org. Over the course of his eight-year congressional career,
Wilson has collected $414,000 from the health sector, topped only by
contribution from what OpenSecrets calls the "finance, insurance & real
estate" sector, from which he has gleaned $455,000.
6. According to his congressional Web site (which has crashed thanks to a
rush of traffic after the president's speech), "Congressman Joe Wilson
(R-SC) announced today that his office will be open on Saturday, September
12, 2009 to host constituents traveling to Washington for this weekend’s
9/12 March on Washington." The September 12 march is sponsored by the
astroturfing group FreedomWorks, and widely publicized by the 912 Project
launched by FOX New personality Glenn Beck who has called Obama a "racist."
7. Wilson is an adamant opponent of health care reform. As
reported by The Hill, his last Tweet before his heckling
performance at Obama's speech read, "Happy
Labor Day! Wonderful parade at Chapin, many people called out to oppose
Obamacare which I assured them would be relayed tomorrow to DC." (Wilson is
currently the top trending topic on Twitter, and has nearly doubled his
number of followers since his outburst.)
8. A military veteran whose health-care coverage is set for life, even after
he retires from Congress, Wilson has "voted
11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he
voted 'aye' for the Iraq War..., " according to Adam Weinstein, an uninsured
Iraq-war veteran, writing at Newsweek's
The Gaggle. "He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room
for President George W. Bush's tax cuts," Weinstein says. "He repeatedly
voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and
TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused -- repeatedly -- to approve
Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all
reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number
of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and many lost
access to their civilian work benefits when they did so."
9. In 2002, the Washington Post
reports, Wilson attacked Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., on national
television, calling him "viscerally un-American" and accusing him of "hatred
of America" because the Democrat suggested that the United States had once
provided Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein with the wherewithal to acquire
nuclear and biological weapons technoligies. Hussein was an ally of the
United States during the war he waged on Iran. (The Post has the video.)
10. Wilson
served in the Reagan administration as deputy counsel in the energy
department.
11. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., hearts Joe Wilson; calls Obama "combative."
"The president’s combative tone did not justify a member of Congress
shouting out 'you lie,'" Graham told the South Carolina newspaper,
The State.
''Our nation’s president deserves to be treated with respect. It was an
inappropriate remark, and I am glad an apology has been made.'' He then
attributed Wilson's behavior to the president's remarks.
"I was incredibly disappointed in the tone of his speech," Graham said. "At
times I found his tone to be overly combative and believe he behaved in a
manner beneath the dignity of the office. I fear his speech tonight has made
it more difficult -- not less -- to find common ground."
12. Wilson's heckling is raising funds for both him and his opponent in his
upcoming congressional race. The Washington Post
reports:
One clear beneficiary of Wilson's
intemperance was his Democrat opponent, Rob Miller, who garnered 46
percent of the vote in a 2008 matchup with the congressman. By midday,
Miller had received more than 10,000 new contributions, totaling more than
$350,000, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
which hailed the "groundswell of support." Miller, a former Marine, still
faces a fierce fight in a firmly Republican stronghold.
ThinkProgress
reveals attempts by Republicans to use the incident to raise funds for
Wilson:
Republican activist Patrick
Ruffini
encouraged his Twitter followers to contribute to Wilson. Calling the
South Carolina congressman a "great
American hero," RedState.com’s Erick Erickson posted this fundraising
solicitation on his site:
Joe Wilson has been identified as the Republican who yelled out that
Barack Obama was a liar.
He gets a drink on me!
CONTRIBUTE TO JOE WILSON HERE. Joe Wilson’s opponent raised
$11,000.00 in an hour after Joe Wilson stood up to Barack Obama. We must
help Joe Wilson.
13. Joe Wilson's BFFs in Congress,
according to
McClatchy Newspapers: Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Delegate Madeliene
Z. Bordallo, D-Guam.
14. Joe Wilson continues to lie. In a YouTube video released Thursday,
Wilson, who apologized to the president Wednesday night via White House
Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel,seems hardly contrite. He now says that
"liberals who want to give health care to illegals are using my opposition
as a distraction..." "They want to silence anyone who's against" the
Democrats' health-care plan. Wilson continues to refer to the health-care
plan as "government run," and attributes his outburst to having spent a
month in town-hall meetings with emotional constituents who oppose a
"government takeover" of health care.
Adele M. Stan AlterNet's
Washington bureau chief.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights
reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142563/
