Media and the Mobs

We started out -- you may vaguely recall this -- arguing about health care.

Then we began arguing about the people shouting at town hall meetings, why they were disrupting the proceedings and whether they were coached by conservative groups to give the impression that America was rising up against Obamacare.

Then the argument focused on whether Democrats were being arrogantly dismissive of people exercising their right to dissent.

And now, the talk has turned to race.

I've watched with amazement as television has replayed clips of shouting and shoving at these town halls again and again. It is, of course, a legitimate story, but it has hijacked the entire debate -- thanks to a media culture that loves conflict and colorful video.

I've probably covered hundreds of town hall meetings, and when there are a few protestors waving signs or shouting insults, you always wonder: Do I give this a paragraph? Is it the lead? Such meetings can be pretty dull affairs. But in the YouTube age, someone calling a lawmaker a liar -- or, in more confusing fashion, demanding that the government keep its hands off my Medicare! -- quickly becomes a viral sensation.

So much for reasoned discourse about the public option or taxing Cadillac plans.

But are they angry about Obama's health plan, are they angry at Obama, or are they angry about everything? A sweeping health reform like the president's naturally unsettles people, but if you watch some of the protestors, they seem royally ticked . . . in some cases by a sense that they're getting shafted by this administration.

Is that, in part, racial? I'm not ready to reach that conclusion. But so much for those premature obits for the angry white voter. The question for me is how prevalent they are -- and whether the media will continue to prefer analyzing them to scrutinizing the guts of the health-care plan.

The racial question surfaced in this Paul Krugman column, which also tackled the notion that righty protestors are more or less like lefty protestors:

"Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there's no comparison. I've gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can't find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. . . .

"The driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the 'birther' movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.