I’ll let you finish, but...

I love America. Especially that whole First Amendment thing, the one that says we can say what we want as long as it doesn’t start a fire in a movie theater. I haven’t read it in a while, but it’s something like that.

This in mind, I propose a constitutional amendment that expands on the brilliance of the first one and states that we are no longer allowed to say or express whatever we want, when we want to, no matter who is talking.

I bring this up because on Sunday during the House debate on the recently passed health care reform legislation, Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer yelled “It’s a baby killer!”

This was during Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak’s emotional statement defending a last-minute deal made for a vote for said legislation from Stupak in return for “an executive order guaranteeing that the bill would not change existing limits on federal funding for abortion.”

Now, let me begin by saying I am not here to comment on the issue of abortion at all. That said, I heard in a social studies class once that there are rules as to who gets to speak when in the House of Representatives, and although Mr. Neugebauer has since apologized, it’s a little bit like when you were 6 years old and you had to apologize to the elementary school principal for taking your pants off in the cafeteria.

Yet this has come on the heels of another Republican Representative — Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. — shouting “You lie!” during a speech by President Obama in early September. And of course, I think we all remember Kanye West’s infamous interruption of Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards later that month.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that interruptions are an American tradition, for who can forget the great old high school homecoming tradition of a student interrupting the football game to run naked across the grass in front of a proud yet understandably uncomfortable community.

Yet this American spirit has gotten out of control. Now it is just confusing my inner 7-year-old, who was not only told to not speak if it was someone else’s turn to talk (which I learned when I interrupted my mother’s friend to ask her a question when she was trying to tell a story), but also not to speak unless you have something nice to say (and I asked her why her butt was so big).

These “celebrities” and “people we’ve put in charge of running our country” seem to have forgotten the simplest rules we learn as children. My solution: a new constitutional amendment so they’ll relearn them. Either that, or we send them back to elementary school. We’ll say I sent them ... the lunch ladies will hate them.


E-mail: henrgree@indiana.edu