Do I Really Mean What I Write?

Last night, I had a brief conversation with someone I really respect. I asked him to read my recent article entitled, "Steve Chabot is Full of Shit". He raised an eyebrow at the title, and I read a wealth of remonstration in that one gesture. It lead me to ask myself the question: Do I really mean what I said about Steve Chabot or am I just shooting my mouth off?

Now I've never met Steve Chabot. Never shaken the man's hand, never attended an event he's been at that I can recall, I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen the man in person - only on TV and online.

But Steve Chabot invited himself into my home by way of his Tele-Town Halls. I didn't sign up for it and neither did anyone else in my household. One day we got a phone call on our home line and, if I recall correctly, there's a recording introducing what the call is for, and then you're given the option to listen in or hang up. After a second, you hear Steve Chabot himself talking about the current issues of the day and what he, as a congressman, is trying to do about them and what his positions are.

During the very first phone call, listening to Steve Chabot state his positions had me biting my tongue to near about bleeding and, quite literally made me ill. I had to listen to some of the most intolerant, bigoted claptrap I've had to listen to in quite awhile. If I'm not mistaken this was around the time some idiot decided it would be a great idea to put a sign in the window of restaurant declaring his establishment to be English Only.

Well, Chabot and his conservative supporters all support English Only in Cincinnati and lest you think I'm joking, you can look here for Chabot's position supporting the now defunct (and bigoted) initiative to make English the "Official Language" of the United States.

This time around what I learned is that Section 8 is responsible for all the problems being experienced in Western Hills, Price Hill and Colerain - areas which local white folks are quickly writing off as "ghetto". Black people moving in, apparently, make an area ghetto.

What I learned from the most recent town hall is that Steve Chabot doesn't want to answer any tough questions - even in a roundabout fake diplomatic way. The way Steve Chabot deals with a tough question is to hang up on the person who asked it. The only calls he took were from, what I could hear, older conservatives who stroked his ego, reinforced his conservative talking points and told him what a good job he's doing.

But the simple questions I asked - which I would have settled for a false diplomacy had he allowed them to be asked, let alone answered. But that he was too cowardly to even let them be asked and then disconnected me from his public forum to boot...

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my initial assessment of Chabot until he makes any move toward changing it. Right now, it's my ultimate satisfaction that if you do a Google search for "Chabot, Telephone Town Hall" my initial article is the second search return.

Maybe if enough people read it....then maybe, just maybe....

lol - time will tell


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Chabot Telephone Town Hall
Another take on the town halls from my blog pal over at CityKin


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