7 unforgettable moments in political heckling
They have something to say. And if someone else is already saying something? Well, that's beside the point.
After Michelle Obama's confrontation with a heckler at a fundraiser Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., protesters interrupting political events are again back in the news, conjuring memories of past hecklers who have brought to a screeching halt policy speeches, campaign appearances, press conferences and everything in between.
The first lady dispatched the protester, who urged the Obama administration to take a stronger stand on LGBT equality, by threatening to leave the event. The rest of the crowd, in turn, shouted down the protester and urged the first lady to stay and finish her remarks.
But not every heckling episode ends as quickly or proceeds as cleanly. Some have completely overshadowed the event itself, resurfacing again and again in press reports and frequently crowding out the purpose of the event in the first place.
Others have dragged on for what seems like an eternity, yielding some painfully awkward moments for the people onstage - who just want to finish their remarks and leave, thank you very much - and the heckling protesters, who almost always continue shouting even as they're dragged unceremoniously from the room.
The outburst of a heckler can be one of the most exhilarating elements of spontaneity in the frequently over-scripted and canned events that usually constitute modern American political stagecraft.
Spontaneous, however, isn't always pretty.
Here's a look at some recent hecklers who have gained national - and sometimes international - attention, as they said their piece, propriety be damned.
Obama heckled on Gitmo policy
As President Obama laid out the future of America's war on terror during a speech at the National Defense University on May 23, 2012, he touted two big policy changes that were undertaken, in part, to soothe the concerns of anti-war civil liberties activists: A renewed push to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and new restrictions on America's use of unmanned drones to strike terrorists overseas.
One such activist in the crowd, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, was apparently not impressed.
Toward the end of the president's speech, as he was about to detail the next steps in Guantanamo's closure, Benjamin erupted in an angry tirade, interrupting the president for roughly seven minutes before she was ejected from the room.
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"You are commander-in-chief, you can close Guantanamo today," Benjamin said, bemoaning the 102 "desperate people" imprisoned in Guantanamo who are on a hunger strike to protest their detention.
"Why don't you let me address it, ma'am?" the president asked, his irritation palpable. "This is part of free speech, is you being able to speak, but also you listening, and me being able to speak."
The crowd applauded, and Mr. Obama continued his speech, but in short order, he was interrupted once more, as Benjamin exhorted the president to "Abide by the rule of law" and stop striking terrorist suspects overseas with unmanned drones in the absence of due process.
After her second interruption, Benjamin was escorted from the room, but Mr. Obama asked the audience not to discard her concerns entirely. "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to," he said. "Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn't listening to me in much of what I said, but these are tough issues. And the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong."
NRA CEO shouted down after Newtown shooting
After the December 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which claimed the lives of 20 children and six faculty members, cries began almost immediately for stricter gun laws to prevent future episodes of mass murder.
The National Rifle Association, the nation's largest pro-gun rights group, was perhaps mindful of the raw emotions coursing through the American public in the wake of the tragedy, waiting about a week before declaring its opposition to the gun control measures being proposed, like a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and an expanded background check system for gun purchases.
Instead, in a speech on December 21, 2012, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre scorned those measures as ineffective, saying that the nation's "utterly defenseless" schoolchildren could only be protected by stationing armed guards in every school in America - a proposal the NRA called its "school shield" initiative.
That was enough to set off a pair of protesters from Code Pink. One stepped right in front of LaPierre at the lectern and held aloft a sign reading "NRA KILLING OUR KIDS." After he was escorted out of the room, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin picked up the torch, holding a sign that read "NRA BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS" and shouting, "The NRA has blood on its hands! Shame on the NRA! Ban assault weapons now, ban assault weapons now!"
Mitt Romney heckled on the campaign trail
After four Americans, including the U.S ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, were killed during a September 11, 2012, terror attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time slamming the Obama administration for a "disgraceful" response to the attack and other simultaneous threats to U.S. outposts across North Africa.
"I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi," he said in a statement released the same day of the attack. "It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."
Romney's charge that the administration 'sympathized' with the attackers sprang from a press release issued by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, which had also been under attack, condemning an anti-Muslim film initially believed to be the source of the regional unrest. Crucially, however, that statement arrived before any actual attacks on American facilities took place and was not sanctioned by the administration before it was issued.
Romney was criticized left, right, and center for his hasty trigger finger - pinning blame for tragedy on the administration before the facts were clarified.
And at a campaign rally in Fairfax, Va., on September 13, 2012, a protester interrupted Romney as the Republican addressed the attack in Benghazi.
"Why are you politicizing Libya?" the protester asked before being drowned out by Romney's crowd shouting "USA! USA!"
"I would offer a moment of silence, but one gentleman doesn't want to be silent, so we're going to keep on going," Romney replied.
Christie gives as good as he gets
Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., was one of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's fiercest backers during the 2012 campaign, and he also proved to be one of Romney's most deft surrogates at handling the hecklers who frequently popped up on the campaign trail.
While he was stumping for Romney in Iowa in December 2011, during the height of the primary campaign, Christie was interrupted by protesters shouting, call-and-response style, "Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are the corporate one percent!"
"Put people first!" They yelled. "Make Wall Street pay!"
Romney, a wealthy former private equity manager, was frequently tagged throughout the campaign, fairly or not, as the embodiment of privilege. But Christie, rather than responding to the substance of the protests, simply laughed them off.
"You're so angry, aren't you?" he asked with a broad grin. "Let them continue. Work it all out, work it all out for yourselves."
"That was the entertainment we brought from New Jersey tonight," he told the crowd after the protesters were removed from the event. "I hope you all enjoyed it, they'll be working at the Marriott down the street. Please remember to tip your waiters and waitresses, alright? Now let's see, where was I before I was so New Jersily interrupted?"
Weiner heckled during his resignation speech
Former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., vaulted himself into the pantheon of infamous political figures undone by sex scandals when resigned from Congress in 2011 after the revelation of lewd photos that he sent to women via Twitter.
After several days of denying the veracity of the photos and implying there was some kind of conspiracy against him, Weiner, now seeking a political comeback with a mayoral bid in New York City, came clean and tearfully announced his resignation during a press conference in New York on June 16, 2011.
"I'd hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district elected me to do," he said. "Unfortunately, the distraction that I have created has made that impossible, so today I'm announcing my resignation from Congress."
"Yeah! Bye-bye, pervert!" shouted a man in the crowd, later revealed to be Benjy Bronk, the sidekick of radio shock-jock Howard Stern.
Weiner attempted to continue his prepared remarks, but Bronk would not let up. "The people demand to know, were you fooling around?" he asked as Weiner, radiating discomfort, struggled to retake control of the event-run-amok.
"You lie!"
As President Obama's push to reform the nation's health care system gathered steam throughout 2009 and 2010, a variety of objections to the proposed legislation were aired by conservatives. Among them: a concern that the president's reforms would extend federally subsidized insurance coverage to undocumented immigrants living in America.
The president took these and other objections head-on during a rare speech before a Joint Session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2010.
"The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," said the president, staring down the Republican side of the chamber that had insisted the opposite was true.
One such Republican, Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, wasn't having it.
"You lie!" he bellowed at the president, a violation of decorum without precedent in the history of presidential addresses before Congress.
Vice President Joe Biden could only shake his head sadly at the outburst. The president, after overcoming his initial surprise, quietly insisted, "It's not true."
Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., however, did not take the interruption in stride, her head snapping around to find the source of the outburst and her eyes flaring with obvious rage at the breach of propriety in her chamber.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the dean of the House and the longest-serving House member in American history, later said, "I've never seen that kind of outburst on the floor from a member towards the president of the United States."
While he did not disavow what he said, Wilson, under pressure from Republican leaders, later said he regretted where he said it.
"Last night, I heard from the leadership that they wanted me to contact the White House and state that my statements were inappropriate," Wilson said, explaining that the remark was "spontaneous."
Mr. Obama, asked about the remark the next day, was willing to let bygones be bygones. "I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes," he said. "He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I'm appreciative of that."
Bush dodges incoming shoes
As President George W. Bush's time in office was drawing to a close in late 2008, he visited Iraq to discuss that country's future with Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who assumed power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Bush's trip was meant to highlight political and military achievements in the war, which was becoming more unpopular by the day among both Iraqis and Americans, but his farewell tour took a dramatic detour during a news conference with Al-Maliki, when an Iraqi reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, hurled a pair of shoes at Mr. Bush's head.
"This is your farewell kiss, you dog," al-Zaidi said as he removed his shoes and threw them at the president.
Iraqis consider a beating administered with a shoe to be a symbol of supreme contempt. The reporter later said during a court appearance that his action was motivated by the "violations that are committed against the Iraqi people."
Bush, reflexes apparently still intact at the age of 62, dodged both pieces of flying footwear. After the reporter was escorted out, the president seemed unruffled. "I don't know what the guy's cause is," he said, "but one thing is for certain - he caused you to ask me a question about it. I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it. These journalists here were very apologetic, they said this doesn't represent the Iraqi people, but that's what happens in free society."
In 2009, al-Zaidi was sentenced to three years in prison by an Iraqi court.