You want to come over Michelle Obama over her fitness advocacy? I'll roll my eyes, but that's fair, it's something she's actually done, after all. Heckling Pickles because she ran someone over? I'd probably wince, but hey, she did do that. Going after Nancy Reagan because of Oliver North would just be stupid, however.

Is just bad behavior, it is not a political statement. Some disagree, but it is from the same reasoning that allows for the "domino effect" or "gateway drugs."

It is emotional and not logical nor is it respectful. But I respect that some will disagree.

Michelle Obama is the First Lady. She gets no paycheck and she has no power. She was at that fundraiser only because she is a famous person who would draw contributors.

So would a lot of movie stars. Is heckling them about executive orders appropriate?

No?

Then why do people try to justify heckling Mrs. Obama?

In my opinion was being stupid. Same for the ones here who think its ok that she did this

Now if she starts to heckle Congress, I'll have a little more respect for her.

As it is for what she done to Michelle not so much

who DOES issue Executive Orders. If you don't think most President's wives haven't given them an earful during pillow talk, you don't know our First Ladies.

then you don't know a lot of men.

The whole thing was rude and extremely unfair.

If Sturtz wants to heckle somebody, she needs to heckle somebody with the power to make changes.

She just damaged everything she stands for. She also needs to know that despite what Stupid thought about things, presidents do not govern via fiat.

As soon as she set foot in that house to give a speech at a political fundraiser, she became fair game for heckling.

When my wife and I go to bed we don't engage in 'pillow talk', as you call it. Hell we don't even have sex then either. We go to bed at night to sleep.

the incredible influence First ladies have had on their husbands and their Presidencies.

Mallard Fillmore conferred with his wife Abigail on most policy decisions. Abigail Adams was a key confidant whose opinion on policy John Adams regularly sought out. Hillary Clinton engaged in policy making for the Presidency during the Clinton years when she headed the healthcare panel. Roz Carter -- hell she practically ran the country with Jimmy, and regularly sat in on Cabinet meetings. Eleanor Roosevelt -- my god, was there another First Lady more influential on the Presidency except for, perhaps, Nancy Reagan?

If you don't think that Michelle Obama isn't one of the key advisors to Barack Obama, you're nuts.

If she has no power, then it doesn't matter what she was speaking about, because it doesn't matter.

If she has no power, then what is happening with the tens of thousands of dollars raised?

while she is making a speech on something totally unrelated, is by far the most effective way of seeing them enacted.

and how would you have felt if she had been speaking about LGBT rights and a protester had started heckling her about the plight of inner city children(would you have supported the heckler just as much?)

And if President Obama had promised to sign an executive order to help the kids, and failed to do so, I would support the heckler.

I asked this in another of the threads about FLOTUS and her heckler. The thing is that I don't think anyone should ever be above challenge, so it becomes a matter of whether someone should expect an audience to be polite enough to willingly set aside their right to challenge the authority or position of the speaker. Frankly, I have a hard time with that notion. In a free and open society, no one should expect to be above challenge.

If it all comes down to a question of politeness, then are we really saying that public officials or others who speak on their behalf should not be challenged because it hurts their feelings? Really?

Michelle Obama was speaking about poor children in cities. The heckler was not responding to that topic with a challenge, but interjecting her own agenda on a completely different topic. If this was a "challenge," then the challenge must've been to say, "Your interest in impoverished children is not a relevant subject; my interest in federal contractors having non-discrimination clauses is the REAL relevant subject." No wonder FLOTUS got pissed off.

...but the discussion about this topic seems to have evolved from the specific incident to the general principle, e.g. the subject line of this OP. And in the broader sense I still believe that no one should expect to be above challenge.

So let's bring this back to the specific incident. Do you think an audience member has the right to raise a challenge unrelated to the speaker's remarks? Offhand, I can't bring myself to say no, although I tend to handle interruptions like that by deferring the challenge-- "OK, I hear you, but that's another conversation." If I'm serious I'll usually offer to make arrangements to have the conversation, e.g. "Why don't you come see me during office hours," or "let's talk about that right after we're done here." Michelle Obama's reaction seemed more along the lines of "When I speak I expect you to listen and not interrupt."

That's OK too, but whenever anyone professes to be above challenge, their motives need to be examined closely.

how would you know that. Or are you just making it up? I'm guessing the latter. That's not been reported anywhere, and it doesn't correspond to the only clip that exists.

Listen to the audio clip. She is giving an impassioned speech about child poverty, saying "that's why we're here."

Shamefully using poor children to raise money for Republican-lite candidates

And by the way, poverty and gun violence among children in cities are pretty coterminous when you're speaking about urban areas ... which she was. Here's the portion before the interruption. It's about gun violence AND poverty. If you don't know Englewood (I do), it's probably the worst neighborhood in America.

in that case.

And the transcript shows the speech was about getting Democrats elected. That's what she talked about at the start, in the middle, and at the end. Hell, even the next thing she said after the heckle was:

how frustrated second-class citizens can feel, so I don't judge the heckler poorly in way whatsoever.

Perfect short synopsis of the America of tabloid talk shows. The America of Jerry Springer.

Heckling is an art form for some. IF you stand up in public and make your voice heard, EXPECT another voice to chime up and tell you that you are wrong, stupid, mistaken, etc..

In the public realm, anything goes.

I would never want to go back to the 1950's. I think people just hid things better back then. They pretended to be one thing in public and then were another way in private. Now, our rude and childish behavior is just more out in the open.

It's called civility.

It doesn't let the rudeness ratchet up, so the old rude is the new normal, allowing for a new level of rude to rise up.

It lets things that shouldn't be said at all at least not be said to many.

And it allows for a difference between values and norms of behavior and what people actually do. If you justify your variance from the norms and ideals by saying it's okay for you but not for others, that's hypocrisy. If you merely say you're flawed and hope to do better, that can be overlooked and should be.

To a large extent, though, it's not the latter. It's just hypocrisy. Cali saved me the trouble in this thread (http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10022950324 ).

But there have been the occasional thread at DU over the years concerning hecklers. Whether it's okay to shout down somebody giving a speech, to impede their speech even temporarily, on the propriety of things like free speech zones. When it's somebody shouting down a conservative, a racist, a hate-monger, an anti-AGW believer, etc., it's usually considered a good thing. No need for him/her to be elected or even tax-payer funded. Speech can be met with speech. And it's not even all that important that the person be speaking in his or her usual role: If a professor or businessman noted for anti-Democratic/progressive opinions is speaking at a function completely unrelated to those opinions, if it's on a topic completely unrelated to those opinions, it's usually deemed okay to radically interfere in order to make yourself heard.

You just learn to accept that the more extreme partisan a person is the more blind they are to their own double standards. Our side is good; bad things are accidents, rare occurrences that are publicized only out of bad intent. Their side is bad; apparently good things are misperceptions or wilful distortions of the truth.

there is zero expectation of a civil response. If you aren't ready to be confronted, challenged, shamed, or insulted, don't heckle.

Anyone interrupting a speech should be prepared to be told to shut up, that they're wasting other people's time who came to hear the topic of the speech, that they should leave, etc. But that doesn't make the idea of heckling something that should never happen. It just shows there's a big divide between the heckler and the speaker. Sometimes the idea it to show that, as I think happened here.

But I think anyone that CONNECTED with politics should be prepared to be heckled. And in fact Michelle Obama WAS prepared.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

And of course people will use her as a vehicle to air their grievances. This isn't rocket science folks.

I'm shocked at all the authoritarian types who think this was wrong. Well, not really, SOP.

How about a nice bowl of Cheerios.

I'm no EVANGELICAL hahaha. And I don't even attend church. But I will say.... "Amen"..... to this post !!!!

'Cause dads listen to their daughters, so caterwauling at Sasha and Malia should be fair game, don't you agree?

Shit, who did the Obamas live next door to in Chicago, should give that guy a piece of your mind, too!

but I love this first Lady.

The unconditional free speech defenders seem to disregard the value of civil discourse. Ironically that has been the chief complaint many of us have had about how republicans treat the president.

Understand the meaning of full equality, and the burden it places on those discriminated against.

can only focus on the heckler's issue and not on the issue that was the topic of discussion: urban childhood poverty. No self-respecting LGBT person I know would ever--EVER--think that child poverty is an issue of lesser importance than how federal contractors write their contracts. How dare anyone dismiss the massive and critical issue of child poverty in America.

Shame.

are you suggesting that all those folks that paid to see Michelle speak will no longer support that cause because of the heckler?

And the childhood poverty, which is important, was only spoken about for a couple minutes

protestor was making. It's up in the air whether she helped or hurt her own cause.

Myself, I think the GLBT movement has done very well for itself by irritating powerful people.

A number of posters on these threads have told us that GLBT's already have enough rights.

Quite possibly a bigot.

I do think there's something of an argument that it's better to hold off on the Executive Order until after the DOMA/Prop 8 decisions--some SCOTUS justices use GLBT political victories as an excuse to find constitutional protections, as messed up as that sounds.

But, that EO needs to happen immediately after the SCOTUS decisions, at the very latest.

You'd think Ms Obama was made of glass, listening to all of the whining. She handled it just fine, it goes with the territory.

Too in-your-face. Period. Donating her time to an intimate audience of supporters only to get screamed at from feet away? No. There were no cameras. The only audio doesn't even capture the beginning of the heckling. It's from a phone. The pool reporters didn't even hear most of what the woman said because she was right up front.

Rented hall, campaign type event, fine. Lights, camera, action, security.

It would seem the art of civil disobedience is now lost on many DUers.

I wonder why that is. Are little wives just supposed to take it? Be meek and subservient? Fuck that.

Hey the heckler's issue has totally been lost because of her poor choice of venue. Barely got a mention on MSNBC even. Just as an aside, like it goes without saying that Michelle supports LGBT rights so it was silly to begin with.

Then they've been talking about how the RW and Fox News have been portraying Michelle as the angry black woman and lacking class again today. And her arrogance. Can't leave that out. It all sounds vaguely familiar somehow.

The one fact that many on DU seem to be overlooking is that is appropriate to heckle those who claim to support your cause. In fact, it's just as appropriate as heckling those against your cause. Everybody's feet needs to be held to the fire.

If MO speaks at another political fundraiser and she is heckled again, I will respect and support that heckler, too. Since when did the US in 2013 become England in the dark ages?

fyi

with your position. seriously. do you know Michelle Obama personally or something?!. it's kind of "odd".

Just as I didn't mind it when it happened to republican wives. They use their unelected position to influence policy. Most of Michelle's I agree with. But if I don't agree, I have a duty if they are attempting to influence policy.

And in both recent cases, Barack and Michelle, I get the distinct feeling that these are not purely accidental outbursts, because they seemed timed to catch both at particularly vulnerable public moments and then leave them twisting in the wind while security takes a dive. All it would take would be one wrong word or one eyebrow raised too high and whammo, the media axe would fall, and one or both would get the ol' high-tech you-know-what that Clarence Thomas complained about.

In other words

Just looking at some of the names it's just par for the course of anything anti-Obamas.

Why is it OK to "be rude & selfish & blurt out your opinion that no one asked for" when an elected official is involved, but not otherwise?

However, I think the incivility is a normal and expected consequence of the increasing powerlessness and irrelevance of American citizenship.

Massive majorities are against "free" trade agreements like TPP. Whatever they write to their representatives is irrelevant.

2/3 of the population would like "a health care program that covers everybody, like Medicare." Trying to advocate it at a Senate committee gets you put in jail.

90% want gun background checks, including 60% of NRA members. Telling our representatives this had no effect whatsoever.

Half of American families are poor or near poor, and 90% have not benefitted from the "recovery." They would like to see the banksters who caused the crash at least jailed (if not put up against a wall and shot for treason) and taxes raised on the rich. And it does no good to tell this to our representatives.

I'm betting that most incivil hecklers would gladly give up the practice in exchange for real civic power.

DU has never been favorable for discussions that adhere to this statement in your OP:

We should value listening to people then responding in a respectful manner.

What then?

and as such, are THERE to listen to and do the will of the people.

Karl Rove was not elected.

May I heckle them?

I believe your argument has been shot down.

It's a free speech issue on one hand. People can heckle if they want to.

That doesn't mean I support it. I think people who heckle are generally pretty rude. But I don't think it's such a big deal, and it's protected speech. If you think it's rude, say so and move on. What do you think should happen?

I am shocked that so many people seem to think it's ok to heckle anyone. Including elected officials. Though I have not had time to follow much of the discussion that has been going on the past couple of days, I get the impression that this opinion is not a popular one here.

But seriously, what does it accomplish? In my personal opinion, there is nothing to gain by it, and worse, may even do harm to whatever cause one is trying to promote. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm pretty sure that it does do harm. There are far more productive ways of drawing attention to an important issue, than childishly shouting out when someone is speaking.

In my opinion, it gives the appearance of desperation which comes from a position of weakness. After all, the heckler, however worthy their cause, is not the one who will ultimately prevail in such an exchange. Perhaps this is why MLK never engaged in such behavior. He knew not only how to pick his battles, but also how to behave in a way that would effectively change hearts and minds.

'Twas ever thus.