Civility Reaches a New Low at Rustburg High

The headline on Saturday’s story about Rep. Tom Perriello’s town hall meeting at Rustburg High School in Campbell County made a reference to the health care debate. It didn’t turn out that way, thanks to the boorish behavior with which the crowd greeted its representative in Congress.

Debates are civilized affairs in which one side argues its case and the other side is allowed to respond to those arguments.

In a formal sense, however, the meeting Friday night in Rustburg was not a debate. Rather, it was a gathering of voters to let Perriello, a Democrat, know what they thought about the proposed health care reform bill and other matters that have come before Congress in recent months.

Which is fine. Perriello has held 21 such town hall meetings to gauge the sentiment of the voters in the Fifth District that he represents. That’s as many town halls as any member of Congress has held during the August recess.

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It’s uncalled for, unnecessary and amounts to a poor reflection on the people of the county — or at least that part of the county.

At many town hall meetings across the state and nation, speakers are asked to identify themselves, a common courtesy to the host of the meeting. Most in Rustburg did not.

Typical of the comments at the meeting was this one from an unidentified speaker who said the proposed health care reform legislation is “socialism.” The crowd responded with loud cheers and jeers. Another speaker claimed the health care bill would give the government access to people’s bank accounts. That is clearly not true, but rather something the speaker picked up from the Internet or a radio talk show.

Perriello calmly replied that if there was any language in the bill that even remotely suggested that, “it should be cleaned up.”

Another speaker fell short of any specific criticism of the health care reform package proposed by President Obama, but simply referred to it as “the 1,017-page Obama death care bill” that she objected to on “legal, moral, constitutional” and other grounds.

That really didn’t add to the debate, but her comments brought the crowd to its feet cheering.

One speaker went against the sentiment of the crowd by pointing out that probably more than half of them, like her, were receiving Social Security and Medicare. “Both of those programs are socialist,” she said, adding that without them she and her husband would not have been able to keep their home and car.

Her comments were the exception during the gathering Friday night in Rustburg. Such incivility has no place in the political system designed for honest give and take on the issues without the jeers and obnoxious comments.

Campbell residents should be ashamed. One would think they have been watching too many professional wrestling matches.