This is from 2010 but I just found it tonight, thanks to Upworthy. We've covered Michael Graham's tea party ways here before, most recently with an appearance he did on Megyn Kelly's show. There's nothing unusual about the guy. He's just one
August 23, 2012

This is from 2010 but I just found it tonight, thanks to Upworthy. We've covered Michael Graham's tea party ways here before, most recently with an appearance he did on Megyn Kelly's show.

There's nothing unusual about the guy. He's just one in the right wing army of hate talkers who keep the base stoked up and angry. But on this day, with this interview, Graham got hit with the force of a hot Irish temper and an articulate politician all at once. He found himself completely out of his league. Michael D. Higgins was elected President of Ireland in 2011, but this interview took place while he was still leader of the Labor party. He is formidable when angry, which he was in this segment.

Graham was going down the usual neocon astroturf Tea Party road, and President Higgins served him a hefty helping of humility with applause included. This clip starts in the middle of the interview, where Graham has evidently labeled some people -- I'm not sure who -- as antiSemitic, which causes Higgins' Irish temper to boil over and explode on the air. Graham had no idea what hit him.

The funniest part is that Higgins does to Graham what Graham was hoping to do to Higgins. The crowd was stirred, all right, but not in Graham's direction. As he moves from health care to tea party racism to foreign policy and back again, all Graham can do is sputter.

The interview took place in Ireland, presumably in a pub, since there was a reference to Guinness and because I know firsthand that the very best political discussions always take place in pubs. I'm not sure if Graham was on some kind of international "dump on Barack Obama tour" or what, but I will note that Higgins is now Ireland's President and Graham is still a relative unknown who bows and scrapes to his tea party keepers while remaining relatively obscure in the larger hate talk universe.

If you're tired of hearing Fox talkers, this will be a refreshing break for you. Transcript after the jump, and the full uncut interview is here.

HIGGINS: I've spoken of my time in the Midwest. I'm going to the Greyhound bus station and hearing for the first time "poor white trash." These people, who -- you know, I was there before the Civil Rights charter came in and frankly the idea that a person would not have one job, but would have two jobs, or three jobs and work all the light hours that are there and still not be entitled to the basic protection of fundamental care is so outrageous.

So whether you agree with Obama on what he is doing and aspects of his foreign policy -- I disagree with some things about Latin and South America --

[crosstalk]

But one of the things I do agree, the idea of being a social floor, below which people wouldn't fall, that's the future. I think even the poorest people in the great country that is the United States should be entitled to basic health care --

GRAHAM: Okay --

HIGGINS: -- And I don't think they'll thank the Sarah Palin lookalikes and followers for taking it off them.

You're about as late an arrival in Irish politics as Sarah Palin is in American politics and both of you have the same tactic. The tactic is to get a large crowd, whip them up, try and discover what is the greatest fear, work on that, and feed it right back in a frenzy. And that leads you in time then when you have in fact maybe one of the most gifted Presidents elected. I happen to not agree with all of his foreign policy but you know you regard for example someone who happens to have been a professor at Harvard as somehow now very handicapped.

You don't find anything wrong at all with this Tea Party ignorance that is being brought all around the United States, which is regularly insulting people who have been democratically elected.

(applause)

GRAHAM: Deputy Higgins, I'm not going to insult you by --

HIGGINS: -- oh I think you should.

GRAHAM: --by bringing up your lack of knowledge of the Tea Party movement other than to --

HIGGINS: I lived in the United States and you know one interesting thing, Mike? You know the big difference as I listened, I lived in the Midwest, in Willie Nelson country. I was a student there at the end of the 60s, I was a professor in Illinois when they entered the 70s.

The magnificent, decent, generous people of the United States, with whom I had supper. People who I sat and ate homemade ice cream with them. The difference between them and the tiny elite who are in charge of warmongering foreign policy in the United States is just enormous.

So therefore when you go on your picnic around the country you're really not representing the decent United States people who are very proud, correctly, of the person they've elected President which they're entitled to do.

But you have the neck to say that people like me who are willing to talk to people or at least are trying to build peace are somehow or another in favor of people who want to martyr Jewish people. That is an outrageous statement. I am not antiSemitic, I am not in favor of martyr, and unlike you, I make my profession in politics and I worked in human rights. And I condemned Hamas for sending rockets. Not that that will matter to you.

Because you know what you are, and I wish you well. Keep drinking Guinness and keep ranting away, but don't suggest that those of us who are working for peace in the heat of the day are somehow interested in martyring Jews.

There's a man in the United -- you know him. I think you may have interviewed him. Mark B. Klein. He represents fourteen Jewish organizations in New York. He organized forty-five members of the House of Representatives to sign a letter condemning Barack Obama for giving Mary Robinson the Medal of Honor. Yeah.

I was debating with him on a program rather like this and I said to him "How can you conclude that Mary Robinson is anti-Semitic?" And he said -- and I said "Or Bishop Tutu, for example?" "Bishop Tutu is anti-Semitic as well!" You're going down that road. And really, it is very dangerous stuff.

The fact of the matter is -- look. Young people from the United States are traveling all over the world again. They're welcome in Europe. They're backpackers and hostels. People are talking to them. Because the image of the United States, we've got away from this warmongering is getting better.

At least forty-seven million people that the likes of you condemn to no health care in a country that I was proud to work in -- these people are going to have some health care.

So this is the issue. So therefore be proud to be a decent American rather than just being a wanker whipping up fear.

[applause]

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