Murphy Takes Ogonowski’s Breath Away

October 10, 2007 by Grainne.

“I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t swallow.”

– Jim Ogonowski

Admittedly, that quote is taken out of context. You may have heard it once, twice or twenty times before in the context of Jim Ogonowski’s non-life-threatening case of a sore throat in that horrible Communist country to our north, Canada, where, rather than admit Jim to a hospital, evil Canadian doctors had the gall to send him packing to a pharmacy to buy some cherry-flavored throat lozenges, a bottle of Sudafed and a pack of Kleenex. Of course, Jim tells this story in the context of yet another logical vacuum in the health care debate. (Seen through to its conclusion, Ogonowski’s fairy tale actually turns out to be a parable demonstrating why a single-payer health care system is most effective, but that’s a matter for another day.)

At any rate, last night, Jim appeared to have been revisited by the same malady that struck him during his travels in Canada. He couldn’t talk. While symptoms of Jim’s affliction manifested themselves early in the debate, Patrick’s rebuttals pointing out Jim’s logical deficiencies inflamed and aggravated these to a point where not even a throat lozenge would bring back his voice.

Unless you actually saw or heard the debate last night, you probably wouldn’t be aware of this since, yet again, the newspapers failed in their responsibility to provide even the most basic of facts to the people.

Fred Thys of Boston’s NPR affiliate WBUR, however, did manage to get some airtime for Patrick. His short piece on last night’s debate, which can be heard here, highlights one of Patrick’s many victories. It also highlights the reasons why the Tsongas-supported Massachusetts health care plan fails and why a universal, single-payer health care plan would best serve us all.

Video from the debate is now available online so that you may draw your own conclusions about it. I believe you’ll find that Patrick gave real meaning to the word “debate” last night in a way that no other candidate did. He not only effectively stated his own positions, but also he was the lone force driving rebuttals that challenged the other candidates’ statements. This is what we should all want in a congressman: someone who drives the debate with thoughtful ideas and solutions, who challenges the flawed arguments that do nothing to advance our society as a whole, and who, all the while, does so with the utmost conviction and decorum.

We only wish the debate were longer so that Patrick would have had more time to convey his nuanced ideas (which are difficult to fit neatly into 10-, 20-, and 30-second responses) and to expose more comprehensively the fallacies of the other candidates’ positions. I must say, though, that I am personally grateful that I will never again be subjected to Ogonowski’s “Canadian sore throat” or “great-grandmother from Poland on the deck of a ship” stories again.

One last thought. The only criticism Patrick received after his performance last night had to do with his local accent. For the record, Patrick has always spoken this way (as his older sister, I know this).  While his opening and closing statements may have sounded more lyrical than his everyday banter, this is a good thing. For how can we expect people to be inspired by a leader unless he delivers his remarks in an inspiring manner?

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