These Presidential Town Halls Are NOT Staged.
I cannot believe how pathetic some in the Media are accusing the White House of staging President Obama's Town Halls. It's amazing to me that they can't fathom in their minds , that not everyone is a conniving deceitful little imp like they are. But I can assure you, these town halls are not staged.
(UPDATE: Thank you for putting me on the rec list; Sarcastic thanks to Andrea Mitchell who pissed me off so bad I had to write this diary. LOL)
They said the same thing about his Green Bay Town Hall and I was there. Without disclosing any security sensitivities , I will explain , once again , that it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to stage these things. The White House Event coordinator and her staff, have too much on their plate to be worrying about trying to round up plants. For Gods sake, the woman herself is not a professional politico where she would even be thinking like that. The staff are all former campaign volunteers. That's all. Everyone else is a local volunteer who worked on Obamas campaign in the last two years.
The people holding the microphones, those picking up the Press from the air port, those manning the lines, those at the door..... they are all local volunteers that signed up with their local Obama Campaign Organizer. We're you . We're your Mama. We're your sister. We are not Washington politicos. We don't seat people in special seats. Once they get in there, they seat themselves. The only people who get reserved seats, are elected officials. And only those are local elected officials except the Governor of the state or a U.S. representative or U.S. Senator. That's all.
I had out of town , small town mayors and heads of school districts outside of Green Bay, yelling at me to allow them to get in front of all the other people who were waiting in line for two hours and I told them "I'm sorry. You will have to wait just like everyone else". They thought they deserved special treatment because they were important in another part of the state. Well, no. The tickets were given out to people who went on line and applied for them. They were first come , first served with the ticket. There were other tickets given to elected officials. They gave them out to friends and family.
The reason why President Obamas Town Halls are more civil than these members of Congress is quite simple. When you are standing in a line with men and police walking around with guns, staring at you, you're not about to act like a fool. When you are sitting in an auditorium with Secret Service agents and plain clothed policemen staring at your every move, you would have to be a psycho to get up and start acting like a fool. That's why everyone behaved. Hell, I had 1,500 people obedient to ME and I was only standing with Secret Service.
And as for the plants. There's no way. I was asked a few times by people to "try to let them get called". I told them the White House wont do that , but my experience over the last two years watching Obama events, has taught me that those who wave their arms the most, usually get Obamas attention. That's all. I saw the people that came in and I saw the people who asked questions. None of them were plants and many of them were standing in that line forever. The only concern of the White House was to have the seats that were in range of the Media cameras, filled up which were not a problem because they gave out more tickets than the building could take and we were jam packed.
My friend had a mic and she was pissed because no one got called in her section and she wanted to be on T.V. So if it was staged , you bet she would have picked a section where she would be holding the mic . So, I really wish the naysayers would knock it off with these false allegations towards the White House Event Staff because they are not like that. They were not that way during the Primaries . They were not that way during the General and they sure as hell are not about to start being that way now. Not only are they not devious enough, President Obama would not allow it.