Clown Hall
Sunday’s town hall attendees were peaceful and respectful, with the exception of a small group of desperate attention seekers who paved the way for momentary chaos. Photo credit The Vine.
Last Sunday afternoon, Congresswoman Katie Porter (representing the 45th congressional district that encompasses most of Irvine) held her first town hall since the pandemic. As a proud Irvinite, I decided to go to the event at Ward Community Park in Woodbridge with my family. The crowd consisted of around 300 respectful and engaged attendees as well as a dozen or so jackasses.
The only positive thing I can say about this group is that they came prepared with an easy-up to shade themselves from the hot afternoon sun. From the moment this group of clowns erected their easy-up, their intent was clear. They interrupted. They incited. And they they got what they so clearly wanted: attention.
Photo credit The Vine.
They weren’t the only ones looking for attention. There was an enormous banner held up by Green New Deal activists. There were coordinated yellow T-shirts worn by a group concerned about drinking water at Camp Lejeune. There was even a man advertising invermectin (the active ingredient in my dog’s flea and tick medication) as a cure for COVID. All of these people came with political agendas to share. But they were respectful. The crew in the easy-up with had no decorum. Their intentions were bad from the start, and the fighting and yelling began before the Congresswoman took up her microphone.
I had to pee, and so I missed the moment their arguments with fellow attendees went from verbal to physical. I paused on the wide lawn after I left the public restroom (thank you city of Irvine for the facilities), watching a sea of people roiling under the now broken easy-up. I missed the moment when the Congresswoman herself rushed into the fight to protect her town hall’s participants while people yelled for the police officers already on site to intervene. I waited until the police (thank you Irvine PD) extricated the most disruptive members of the melee before I returned. I am not as brave as Congresswoman Porter, and stayed on the sidelines until it was safe.
Irvine PD thoroughly questioned all of those involved in the fight for a very long time. Perhaps they needed a lot of time to get all the details, or perhaps they wanted to keep the morons occupied so that the rest of us could hear Congresswoman Porter’s speech. Congresswoman Porter’s staff provided the crowd with the opportunity to write down questions and those questions were randomly selected for Congresswoman Porter to answer. It was the most equitable way to allow a few questions from a large crowd. The easy-up idiots who weren’t speaking to the police would randomly scream comments or questions at Congresswoman Porter as if they had more of a right to ask questions than the rest of the audience. Their childish behavior continued as we left the town hall.
Hyper partisan politics is stupid. It doesn’t benefit policies or the people meant to benefit from them. It makes government unproductive. It turns simple things, like vaccines that protect people from a pandemic, into controversial issues. And that ultimately hurts us all.
All week I’ve been mulling over the town hall. What do we do with clowns who cannot differentiate between voicing dissent and throwing a tantrum? If we ignore them, their voices dominate. But if we engage, they make clowns of us all. I’m not sure what I would do differently if I had a town hall do over.
Here’s what we shouldn’t do: blame the Congresswoman or Irvine PD. The fault lies with the crew who showed up furious, aggrieved, and looking for a fight.
I believe people of all political stripes are good. I may not agree with their politics, but I know they genuinely believe that their ideas can make our country a better place. I certainly don’t think they’re evil. Far too much demonization of citizens due to their politics has hurt this country.
Having said all that, the group that disrupted our town hall was clearly a bunch of clowns.