Thursday, July 15, 2010

Playing the avatar game

If you’re reading here this morning for the first time about Tom Emmer’s meeting at the council oak with servers yesterday, you are woefully out of touch. Just in case, however, here’s a link to an article in the Strib.

It was a testy meeting, and its end was precipitated by a sack of pennies deposited by the prankster Robert Erickson:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer’s sometimes testy and raucous town hall meeting with servers ended abruptly Wednesday after someone poured a large bag of pennies on the table in front of the candidate:

“Here’s your tip, Tom Emmer!” said Robert Erickson, saying it was in part for his support of Arizona’s immigration bill.

A stunned Emmer looked flustered as Erickson rushed out of a side entrance.

The microphone went dead, and a short time later the organizers announced the meeting was over, more than 30-minutes before the scheduled ending.

Emmer didn't give his closing statement, instead he headed over to servers who had been the most critical.

A few minutes later, Emmer emerged from the back of the restaurant to talk with reporters.

Here’s a photo of the, um, sacking:

Mitch Berg, who can always be counted on to try to buff up whatever conservative turd is lying around, put up a post referring to Robert Erickson as the face of the DFL.

Well, if Erickson is the face of the DFL, here’s the face of the Republicans:

The gunslinger on the right is protesting a speech by the guy on the left about health care reform. In fact, the Strib article drew an expicit parallel between the two:

But even friends said the charismatic candidate did not thrive in front of the testy and sometimes raucous overflow crowd of 200 at Ol' Mexico restaurant. The event often mirrored the tone of recent town hall meetings over health care -- except this time, a Republican was taking heated questions from an angry crowd.

One’s a political prank; the other is an overt threat of violence. But Obama gave his speech; Emmer was undone by a bag of pennies.

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