RED BANK’S DISGRACE GOES NATIONAL

The ugly spectacle of hecklers shouting down a woman in a wheelchair in Red Bank last week is getting national play.

Last night, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s Countdown played a portion of the video Brian Donohue shot for his online Star-Ledger feature, Ledger Live, during the August 26 town hall meeting held by sixth-district Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. at the Red Bank Middle School.

The topic: national health insurance.

“If somebody were to parody the truly ugly behavior at some of these healthcare town halls, it might read like this,” Olbermann says in setting up the video.

“Sadly, no parody required,” he continued. “This actually happened in Red Bank, New Jersey.”

“I have seen nothing like it, Keith,” political commentator Lawrence O’Donnell tells Olbermann after the video runs.

In all his years of covering similar events, O’Donnell says, “I have never seen anything like the behavior that woman had to suffer… I have no explanation for what you just saw.”

The video also was the topic of an article on the Huffington Post, which drove so much traffic to the Ledger Live site that “it nearly swamped our video player,” Donohue tells redbankgreen.