Activist and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson Sr. laughed in the face of catcalls from Tea Party protesters outside the Capitol on Sunday, while his son took care of business inside.
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. - Democrat from Illinois - presided over a sizable portion of the House's health care debate Sunday. He refereed the debate from the Speaker's chair for much of the debate, a task that has entailed dealing with frequent procedural objections from Republicans, including repeated parliamentary inquiries on all sorts of issues.
His father, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., watched his son in action, saying, "I've been impressed." Taking a break from basking in fatherly pride, the elder Jackson took a mosie outside to watch the Teabagger protest. Sam Stein of The Huffington Post videotaped Jackson confronting a mass of Tea Party protesters outside of the Capitol.
One protester yelled at Jackson, "Get a real job, you commie." Another Teabagger cleverly stuck with the important issue at hand (health care) and hollered, "Father another child out of wedlock while you're at it." A black Tea Party protester used a bullhorn to question whether Jackson was there when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Just for the record, the photographic evidence of Jackson's presence accompanies this article.
SOURCE: Gather
Meanwhile, House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Lewis linked arms in solidarity as they walked past angry crowds not unlike the mobs Lewis faced as a civil rights activist decades ago. Yesterday Lewis and other black lawmakers were called n*gger and spat upon by out-of-control Tea Party protesters.
For the latest coverage on today's historic health care reform vote in the House, check out the Washington Post's Health-Care Reform 2010 page.
