Yesterday, Alan Grayson (D-Fla) said that the Republican health care plan was “1. Don’t get sick. 2. If you do get sick… 3. Die quickly!” Here’s the video (short, and pretty funny):
Republicans immediately demanded an apology from him. So today, Grayson apologized:
As Act Blue says, it probably was not the apology they were expecting.
UPDATE: Patrick McHenry (R-NC) called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to officially rebuke Grayson, and Tom Price (R-GA) said he was going to introduce a resolution reprimanding Grayson and even took to the House floor demanding an apology for saying that Republicans want people to die. Of course, this is stunningly hypocritical, given all the Republican noise about “death panels”, and repeated accusations thrown at the Democrats about killing seniors. For example, Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla) saying on the House floor “Last week Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: Drop dead.”
UPDATE 2: Now Grayson is being attacked for using the word “holocaust”. Grayson said “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”
My dictionary defines “holocaust” as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”. For example “nuclear holocaust”. It goes on to define the specific slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, and other groups by the Germans in WWII as “The Holocaust”. Note that the text of Grayson’s statement used “holocaust” with a lowercase h, not “The Holocaust” with caps.
So what’s the problem? Grayson was clearly using the word properly — I think 44,000 people dying every year counts as a holocaust.
UPDATE 3: An enjoyable rant about all this from The Rude Pundit.
4 Comments
I wonder if this made it on any of the cable news stations. Probably not.
Can both Republicans AND Democrats back off the inflammatory rhetoric with terms like “holocaust”? I know Grayson later said he perhaps should have chosen his words more wisely, but he no one will catch that. Can either side have a serious discussion about this issue?
Morning Joe talked with Grayson this morning and went after him on the ‘holocaust’ issue. I say that if the ‘pubs are going to make up DEATH PANELS from ‘senior death counseling’ and what not, grayson had every right to make up his own holocaust hyperbole. He was only illustrating how ridiculous the discussion has gotten.
K!M, I disagree. Sounds like the childhood argument, “Well, HE did it first!” And I don’t think he was using holocaust hyperbole to make a point. He was just being as bad as Republicans, which ends up proving that they are fall prey to idiocy.
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