bryan stratton dot com

From today’s Gawker:

Have you seen the insane video of a woman yelling “Heil Hitler” at an Israeli-Jew who supports health care reform at a recent town hall meeting in Vegas? Well, her name is Pam Pilger. She’s on Facebook.

Not only is she on Facebook, but there’s a pair of YouTube videos of her delivering the offending exclamation and being interviewed just prior to the meeting.

Now, honestly, I couldn’t care less about what she said. Unless she’s doing it during the first half of the 20th century, a woman shouting about Hitler is the definition of a wingnut. And a wingnut is the rhetorical equivalent of roadkill: against your better judgment, you’re compelled to sneak a glance at it, and you wind up seeing something that can’t be unseen and makes you feel a little bit worse about the world you live in.

What interests me is the reaction to what she did. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would have been nothing more than a local news story. There’s a chance that it might have made the CBS Evening News, if it was a slow news day and the broadcast needed some sensational B-roll footage.

But now, thanks to YouTube and a legion of bloggers, it took Pamela Pilger less than four days to become a bona fide worldwide Internet Celebrity. Google News has about 15 articles for “pamela pilger” right now, and the first one went up only 20 hours ago. There are over 1200 hits for “pamela pilger hitler” on Google.

I have to wonder if she ever imagined her outburst would attract that kind of attention? She at least had the sense to lock down her Facebook account, but is that something she had the foresight to do when she first signed up, or did she do it after the hate mail started pouring in? And does the attention scare her, or is she thrilled that her soapbox is larger than she ever dreamed possible?