Just another ‘Town Hall’ meeting in Sux Falls
I just attended the ‘supposed’ town hall meeting at the Elmen Center that KSFY and the Gargoyle Leader hosted. No one called on me to ask a question, because I forgot to wear my armband, apparently. This is how the town hall was sold to the public;
Tonight, there’s a town hall meeting just for you.
The Sioux Falls Next Town Hall Meeting isn’t designed for city officials or development groups, although many of those folks will be there listening to you.
Rather, the meeting is designed for you – you, the one with ideas.
Participating in this event is quite different than attending a planning meeting that often has a set agenda and pre-determined array of topics.
At tonight’s meeting your suggestions will drive the agenda and discussion.
BULLSHIT! They pre-selected questions and guests and didn’t let a single person from the audience ask a question unless it was preapproved. This was the worst form of propaganda I have ever seen in Sioux Falls in a long time. The only thing that was missing was SS troops and Hitler. After they stopped filming, I told Brian, the moderator from KSFY, (Paraphrasing), “This was not a real town hall, people from the audience couldn’t ask questions. This was sold to us by the Argus Leader that if we showed up we could ask questions.” He told me that the panel was still there if I wanted to ask questions. I just waved my hand at him and said “Whatever.”
I should have expected this out of a half-ass TV station and a half-ass newspaper, no, a quarter-ass newspaper.
And watch the video, they talked about how great our bike trail is and why Downtown is not a place for the EC, for one hour straight. The only comedy relief was at the beginning when a ‘LaRouche-Bag’ ranted about the British Revolution and magnetic trains until he got cut off.
On a positive note, I had lots of tasty buttery snails at Tre Lounge afterwards. Yummy. Thanks Dan!