Osbourne puts Kucinich in the loser category and fails to give important details surrounding the case so the public can judge the facts for themselves. And he’s not alone -- Anderson Cooper put Kucinich on his “Ridiculist,"which itself is ridiculous. The corporate media’s general response has been to fail to present relevant facts and to blame the victim in much the way they treated the famous Hot Coffee case against McDonalds.
Most people don’t know the facts of that famous case, even though it is still referenced. A 79 year old woman named Stella Liebeck received third degree burns to 16 percent of her body including her genitals. She spent 8 days in the hospital and needed skin grafts because of severe burns she received after spilling a scalding cup of coffee that was served at 187 degrees. Her quality of life was severely diminished for the rest of her life.
She only sought to have her medical bills paid for and she became a national punch line for it because the corporate media failed to tell her story. Instead they pushed the multi-million dollar corporate propaganda campaign for Tort Deform which is an ongoing effort to take away your rights to use the court system to seek legal redress after you've been harmed.
Osbourne wrote,
“But we’re deeply disappointed in the diminutive lawmaker for filing a lawsuit against the House cafeteria over an April 2008 incident in which he says an unwanted olive pit in a sandwich injured his teeth; he sought $150,000 in damages."This injury required nearly two years, three dental surgeries and a substantial amount of money to rectify,” Kucinich said. Yet C-SPAN footage shows the congressman speaking on the House floor on the same day, so it wasn’t that severe. Tellingly, the operator settled the claim within days. Still, the good congressman has a Cadillac health-care plan, like all federal lawmakers, making us question his motives. Sometimes, Dennis, you just need to let it go.”
But as USA Today reported, days before his column went to print, “None of his dental work, he said, was covered by his health plan nor did he have dental insurance that covered his injury.” So the fact that he had a “Cadillac health-care plan” is irrelevant. (Kucinich has championed Medicare-for-all and was a lone hold-out for a public option.)
Osbourne and the others fail to make their case altogether. Why shouldn’t Kucinich seek to have the corporation that caused his injuries pay his medical costs? Why is it telling that the operator settled his case quickly and amicably? If he was in the wrong and had ulterior motives why didn’t they fight it altogether? The corporate media was totally biased in their favor from the start.
Like many others, Osbourne points to the fact that Kucinich still did his job and spoke on the House floor the day the incident happened as proof that his injuries weren’t “that severe”. But that proves nothing. Anytime you have to have three surgeries because of an injury I’d say the injury was pretty severe. How severe do injuries have to be to seek compensation for medical bills in their opinion? They never say, it’s just their knee jerk response.
As USA Today reported,
In the letter, Kucinich said he had three dental surgeries over two years after he split a tooth -- key to some upper bridgework in his mouth -- right through the crown and to a point below the level of the bone.
The problem was the internal structure of the injured tooth was shot and, Kucinich says, he was in "excruciating pain." He said he shook it off and went back to work.
The bone became infected, then Kucinich said he had an "adverse reaction" to antibiotics and then an intestinal obstruction. After more dental issues, including a failed implant, Kucinich in the end had to get new bridgework and six replacement teeth.
According to USA Today Kucinich said he declined interviews about the lawsuit because he "did not want it said that I was trying the case in the media." MSNBC commentator Ezra Klein wrote in the Washington Post, “Can $150,000 possibly be worth the bad publicity he’s going to get from filing a lawsuit over an olive pit.”
But both Dennis Kucinich and Stella Liebeck were well within their rights to seek legal redress through the court system. Both of them first sought to resolve the issues without legal action.
Why should Kucinich be judged differently than any other citizen by the public or the “liberal media”? In reality, I suppose he isn’t because there’s been a multi-million dollar campaign to brain-wash the American people into giving up their constitutional rights and to scoff at those who exercise those rights.
I suspect that if those who have disparaged the cases of either Kucinich or Liebeck had suffered the pain and expense of their injuries perhaps their attitudes might be a little bit different. These cases aren’t frivolous, but the multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to bring about Tort Deform has paid off.
People are giving away their constitutional rights every single day without even knowing it. (Do you have a cell phone or credit card contract? Yeah, you too then.)
And it’s no wonder the American people have such a distorted view of our civil justice system where the average Joe could go head to head with the richest and most powerful corporations in the world. Even people that are supposed to be trained to separate facts from fiction are pushing the same spin/lies as the mind-molding corporate propagandists that seek to limit your rights to seek justice after you’ve been harmed.
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