For decades our representatives in Washington have come home to hold "town meetings" on this or that public issue, often, shameless testimonies to their own heroic efforts on our behalf. Meantime, national politicians and media label staged campaign events as "town meetings."

Both practices are fakery.

As a teacher of national politics at the University of Vermont, I now find the great majority of references to town meeting not in the democracy section of textbooks but in chapters on the media.

Indeed, it has come to this: After decades of stripping town meeting of its ability to make important decisions, politicians are now absconding with its very name.

In doing so they are demeaning America's oldest, proudest and most fundamentally democratic institution.