I was minding my own business, playing EverQuest 2 online and I watched as Katy Abram talked on Hardball. Who is Katy Abram? Well, a few days ago she was at a town hall meeting for Arlen Specter and she was the woman who stood up and proclaimed that she recently got into politics, at 35 years old, and she was in fear of where the country was heading. She became the poster child for the far right, showing an ordinary citizen who was standing up for her rights. This of course meant she was going to be on every news show she could get on, especially of the conservative kind. There are two YouTube clips I know of, one of her on the Hannity Show and another on a FoxNews morning show. Actually I stand corrected that there are some local affiliate stations she did which are on YouTube.

What will soon show, I’m sure, is what I just saw on Hardball. The guest host was very kind to her, but tore her apart like slow roasted ribs on a spit. To be fair, she did seem like someone who, like she said, had just learned about politics. That was the problem with what she said and her point of view. I have seen some things on the web that haven’t been kind to her, which is the nature of the web, but I’ve also seen sites that have been overly kind to her. This is going to sound like a slap, but it’s not, but she’s a lot like Joe the Plumber when he first was put on the stage.

See, Katy Abram was just some lady who spoke out at a meeting. She probably figured she would say her piece and that would be that. The conservatives, wanting a symbol, elevated her as the voice of the common person. There were no checks of her, no one asked if she wanted to have this position and I’m sure when you’re getting a lot of invitations to talk to different outlets you feel kind of good and it’s exciting to do it. Where things go terribly wrong, as they are starting to happen with her, is if you don’t have your facts straight.

Listening to her on a friendly venue like FoxNews I got the impression she got a lot of her political views from 70s or 80s high school films. Here is a quote from the morning talk she gave on FoxNews:

“I know that years down the road, I don’t want my children coming to me and asking me, ‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’ I don’t want to have to tell them I didn’t do anything. As a normal citizen, the most I feel like I can do is come to this town hall meeting.”

I haven’t heard talk about toilet lines since the early 80s. Where and how does having health care end up with toilet paper lines? This is old Soviet Union talk, communist talk, a failed system talk. When she got on Hardball and asked a few simple questions about the nature of health care, meaning Medicare, she didn’t understand how it worked. All she could say was she felt the country was going in a wrong direction and it needed to stop.

I’m sure there are people right now digging into her past. I hope she is just some normal woman just there to voice her opinion. While people might joke about her, if that ends up being the case then there really isn’t any harm in what she said. She represented her self correctly, she got a little over her head and we can forgive her for that. If she turns out like another woman, who claimed to be just a regular soccer mom but turned out to be a former Republican leader from her county, then Mrs. Abram will have a lot of explaining to do.

Finally yes, the picture of her included in the article does seem to be damaging, but a woman protesting with a sign doesn’t mean Republican conspiracy.

 

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Katy Abram Over Her Head - August 12, 2009
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