Barney Frank Flips on Right to Yell

RUSH: Barney Frank has flip-flopped on the right to yell. Back when it was Skip Gates yelling at a cop, Barney defended it July 28th.

FRANK JULY 28, 2009: I, uhhhh, didn’t follow it all very closely. Well, let me put it this way. The president has said what he wanted to say about it, and I think what he did was very reasonable in trying to diffuse the situation. I did comment that… I would say that to the extent that part of the problem was that people thought that Professor Gates was being disrespectful. People yell at me a lot. I think the right to yell at people in authority is a very important part of American democracy. Of course if you’re disruptive, if you’re threatening, that’s a problem. But — But the right to yell at authority figures is I think a very important right that ought to be protected.

RUSH: Well, that was July 28th. Monday, Boston’s local TV station, Fox 25 Eyeball News, the anchor, Mark Ockerbloom, interviewed Barney Frank about last week’s heated town hall. Remember, where the Lyndon LaRouchie Democrat showed up with Obama with the Hitler mustache. ‘Why do you suppose, Congressman Frank, that it developed into something like this.’

FRANK AUGUST 24, 2009: I don’t understand why those who are opposed to the health care plan have felt that simply debating it is not a good idea and that we should, in fact, dahh, we should be yelling. You’d have to ask them because the initiative for the anger and the — anger is legitimate, obviously, and the disagreement is legitimate. The tactic of, uh, yelling so people can’t be heard, uh, uh, of interruption so you can’t get rational debate, that isn’t legitimate, and I don’t know why people are using it.

RUSH: Why, this is a flip-flop here from July 28th to August 24th, almost a month/ Barney Frank was all for yelling. Now he’s opposed to yelling when the yelling is at him. Ockerbloom, the anchor, said, ‘Well, some people thought you were refreshing in those remarks, telling the woman that she was like debating a dining room table.’

FRANK AUGUST 24, 2009: Frankly, again you have the Lyndon LaRouche crowd — and I’ve been surprised at some of my conservative friends who are defending the LaRouche people for saying that President Obama was like Hitler. By the way, these people, some of them used to say that George Bush was like Hitler and I was just as angry then as I am today. But I also think, yeah, umm, er, the notion that politicians should always tiptoe around, I — I think it’s very important to be honest with people and when people are talking nonsense, in my view, I think I ought to say it’s nonsense. People have been voting me for some time. I don’t think they have ever confused me with an English butler from an old movie, uhh, on — on public television. I think they like to have a sense that when I, uhh, tell them something, it’s what I believe.

RUSH: English butler? Whoever thought he was an English butler? English butlers do not live and cavort on Uranus. They’re in Great Britain. Barney Frank, the Banking Queen.

(playing of Banking Queen spoof song)