And this, after I sat next to him all morning. I didn't, to be fair, recognize him till the session's end. I'd never seen York, and wasn't alerted to his famous bouffant ahead of time, so I hadn't known I was brushing such famous knees until I happened to catch sight of his nametag towards the morning's close. At which point, we had a real moment: "We're gonna give you some color," I laughed. He sort of grunted in reply. Sort of.
The session was a CAP-run workshop on how to best comport yourself in front of television cameras. They spent an hour or so explaining how to sit, how to speak, how to stay on message, and then had folks cycle through a mock interview which was then replayed on a projector and critiqued by the instructor's. I've been doing a fair amount of TV and radio these days, so I volunteered for the public interrogation. My topic? Health care. I am, after all, here in Vegas to participate on a health care panel.
My performance was brilliant, transcendent, inspiring. What a shame I hadn't stolen the tape! When the politely hostile host challenged that I was advocating socialism (in that interview, unlike in my writings, I'd advocated no such thing), I saw no reason to fight. It was just a training session, right? "We should stop running from that moniker," I chuckled. "If we're going to call what Canada, France, Germany, England, Japan, and essentially every -- actually, not essentially, just every -- other industrialized nation offers socialized health care, but they cover all of their citizens with better outcomes and lower costs than we do, then I'm happy to associate myself with that." It was glorious, and I'm only slightly paraphrasing -- at least I remember the "essentially" correction. So imagine my relief to see it on The National Review's website:
One blogger wanted to talk about health care. After his criticism of the Bush administration, Trainer 2 asked, “You're looking for socialized medicine?”
“Sure, why not?” the man answered. “I think it's time people stopped ducking from the moniker socialized medicine. Every other industrialized nation on this planet has socialized medicine. I'm happy to associate myself with that label and that school of thought.”
There was applause all around. That was great, said Trainer 1. It was an example of bloggers speaking their minds: “Yeah, socialized medicine, bring it on.”
Never said "that school of thought." Never said "bring it on." My international rollcall -- gone. And where is my quick list of the outcomes that underlie my support? The quote...so wrong...somebody call a blogger ethics panel! In any case, I am a proud advocate of semi-socialized medicine, semi because I prefer a multi-payer system a la France. And if York's interested in making me something less than a 2D confirmation of his reader's expectations, I'd be happy to debate him on health care, or write a piece extolling socialized medicine's virtues for his magazine, or just see him read through my extensive archives on the subject. Maybe this is the real story of YearlyKos -- here, the anecdotes can talk back.
In any case, if York is unwilling to put in the work or effort demanded by my more substantive offers -- all of which are serious and in good faith -- he's still welcome to attend my health care panel tomorrow at 9:30. But only if he promises to quote me correctly.
Update: On rereading, York was quoting "bring it on" from the trainer. He still completely changed the wording and deleted the countries and outcomes portions of my quote, the effect of which was to make it look like I simply supported socialism, and everyone simply clapped for that. The point here is that you've got fish in a barrel -- why use dynamite?
Cross-posted at Tapped.
