WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT KATY? INSIDE THE MIND OF A HEALTH CARE REFORM HATER

    Ever wanted to calmly ask one of those people who yell at health care reform town halls where they're coming from?  The other night on MSNBC's Hardball, guest host Laurence O'Donnell interviewed a woman named Katy Abram who went to a town hall on health care reform and hollered at Sen. Arlen Specter, "What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created according to the Constitution?" She added that she was 35 and had never cared about politics before but that this issue had "awakened the sleeping giant."
    Abrams claimed that one of her main objections was that "they want us to pay more, or it sounds like they want us to pay more [taxes]. So that's the root of my frustration. This was the straw that broke the camel's back."  O'Donnell pointed out that only families making over $250,000 a year will see any federal tax increase and asked whether Abram's family fell into that extremely rare bracket. "I don't even know," she replied. "My husband takes care of the bills and everything. You know, he takes care of us, and that's all that matters."  Of course, the overwhelming odds are, Abram will actually see her taxes go down, not up.  And she clearly has no idea whatsoever how health care reform might affect her.  Watch the video — she reveals her complete ignorance in literally every reply she makes.  It's appalling how little she has thought this through.
    Then O'Donnell asked her why, after things like 9/11, the war in Iraq and the bail-outs, only this issue had gotten her attention.  "I always seemed to have faith in the government," she replied. "And, honestly, I didn't really care. I had other things going on, you know, getting married, having children. It just... it wasn't a priority in my life."
    OK, sure, she was too busy raising kids to pay any mind to 9/11.  Makes sense.  But now she has little or no faith in our government.  Huh, I wonder why this woman, like so many of the gun-toting reactionaries who oppose health care reform even though it would be in their interest, somehow managed to preserve their faith in the government through the misguided war in Iraq, the bungling of Katrina, the unauthorized surveillance of American citizens, the trillion-dollar deficit and all the other massive blunders of the previous administration.
    Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the photo above.  Sure, that sign in the foreground is hilarious, but if you look carefully at another sign in the picture, the one just above and to the right of the center of the photograph, you'll see it says "Where's the birth certificate?"  Let's not kid ourselves:  This has nothing to do with defeating socialism or preserving the intentions of the founding fathers.  Because people like Katy Abram have absolutely no clue what those are.  No, this is all about Obama.
    And no, I haven't the faintest idea what to do about it.

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[Dan Epstein]

Public Enemy's next record really should be called Fear of a Black President.