How NYU/CSC's "Town Hall Meeting" SHOULD Have Been Done - A Coincidental Demonstration
For over two months, they protested of their eagerness to listen, to welcome the voices of the concerned, to come together with all and work hand-in-hand to help the children ...

Mmmmmm-hm.

Via the purely unrelated vehicle of yesterdays's liveblogging on the ongoing scandal surrounding the political lynching of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Harper's legal affairs contributor Scott Horton and Firedoglake.com accidentally delivered a seamless demonstration of what an online "town hall meeting" should look like.

For those who are new to this long marginalized case -- which, just last week, finally burst through the corporate media's iron curtain and into CBS's February 24th installment of 60 Minutes -- Scott Horton's opening article on Firedoglake is a must-read. For those of us who have followed the case for some time, the liveblogging that took place in the comments section that follows is fascinating and informative as well. And this is despite the fact that, obviously, there was no way that Horton and the few other key bloggers could answer every post. Right? Right. But for those of us who took part in the sadly misnamed "Town Hall Meeting" hosted last Tuesday by the NYU Child Study Center's Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, the liveblogging on Firedoglake provides a refreshing contrast: all the predictably unanswered posts were quite properly allowed to appear and remain in full public view, thereby granting each and every participant the fundamental respect and dignity they deserve.

Having seen it in action, it now seems so clear, so delightfully obvious -- so magnificently simple, in fact, that Fifteen Million Children could grasp it with one finger and explain it to their parents without so much as a single PSA. And yet, so very many unanswered questions linger pensively in the wake of the "public participation and input" that was inexplicably terminated in the womb last Tuesday.

But now, on the heels of yesterday's unexpected demonstration, I find that I have still two more questions for the esteemed Dr. Koplewicz:

1) Dr. K, Which part of the words "OPEN FORUM" do you not understand?

and the obvious follow-up:

2) Dr. K, Can you comprehend that a word is not rendered taboo simply because it is composed of four letters?

I eagerly await your answers by confidential e-mail, Doctor, and I hereby affirm that those answers will remain strictly confidential right up until the moment I read them.