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Congressman Joe Wilson, Republican from South Carolina was rebuked by the House of Representatives for his ill-timed outburst criticizing President Obama’s health care plan. Mr. Wilson shouted, “you lie” during the President’s 467th speech on health care at the joint session of Congress last week. Let’s reduce this issue to the lowest common denominator for each party involved.

He said what he said when he said for one of two reasons.  The most likely explanation is that Mr. Wilson could not control himself when Mr. Obama said something about this proposal that Wilson knew was not factually right.  I believe it related to the coverage for illegal aliens.  The comment from Obama shocked him and caused him to blurt out on the House floor.  Of course, the other explanation is that he planned this to get all the attention, good and bad that he has gotten.  Have most people heard about Wilson before?  Probably not.  Everyone knows who he is now.  The people that would hate him because he is a Republican hate him more.  There are more people that love him now and are giving him money for his next race.  Either way, he has well taken advantage of all the attention he is getting. 

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 The race baitersof the country keep doing what they do best.  They see race in everything whether there is or not.  We still have a race problem in this country.  But it has gotten a lot better.  A white person criticizing President Obama on policy issues does not necessarily make him a racist (or the fact that he comes from South Carolina).  This type of silencing critics of Obama will only serve to not believe future cries of racism where it may actually exist.  A prefect example is Maureen Dowd of the New York Times; she tried to place race into Wilson’s agenda in a recent column.  Dowd uses race to silence the substantive opposition that Wilson expressed.  Former President Jimmy Carter tried to inject the race issue as well yesterday.  It sounded just as absurd as when it came from Dowd and her column. 

Joe Wilson does not owe an apology to Congress.  I respect Mr. Wilson for apologizing once.  Mr. Wilson owed one apology, to the President, for interrupting his speech.  Wilson apologized to President Obama and Vice-President Biden the next day; the apology was accepted.  Move on.  It is not our job to demand or accept Wilson’s apology.  This was up to Obama and he accepted the apology.  Therefore, we should accept the apology as sincere as Obama did.