Where are the cameras at this year’s town meetings?

Two years ago, the Koch Brothers and their big business allies paid a bundle to get Tea Party members out to congressional town hall meetings to shout down any resasonable discusson on health reform. The media were all over it, running footage of the confrontations and the weeping I-want-my-country-back women.

This year, Progressives are coming out in force to confront Republican members of Congress about budget cuts, Medicare “reform” and the attempts to repeal, defund or otherwise cripple reform, but you won’t see a whole lot of coverage. Maybe part of the reason is that Progressives seem to be less violent and screechy in their confrontations.

Progressives also tend to have real questions to ask, like those posed to GOP Rep. Jim Renacci from Ohio.

According to a report by Daily Kos, a questioner asked why Republicans don’t come up with an alternative plan before they repeal the current law.

Renacci replied with a non-answer: “Remember, it was the American people what sent us down there…”

I have a feeling the American people what sent them down there weren’t counting on such deep cuts to the social safety net alongside deep tax cuts for the wealthiest.

I don’t recall seeing anything about the confrontation in the “mainstream” media that was so happy to cover the Tea Party.

However, you will see conservatives claiming these people are being organized by unions and other “liberal” groups as they claim the opposition to health reform two years ago was spontaneous.

Our local paper here in Asheville wrote a story about one of the traveling groups, and the reporter failed to ask who paid for the bus and why people who obviously were on Medicare were holding placards that said, “Keep your government hands off my health care!” The reporter didn’t ask where the bus riders came from or where they were going. The reporter never spoke to anyone with an opposing point of view, and whoever edited the story didn’t see anything wrong with this one-sided piece with no real questions asked.

That’s par for the course in this country now. Our “free” press is free to cover the right, and free to ignore the middle and the left.

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