U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, D-NC, says he won’t hold any town hall meetings during the August recess because of a “death threat” his office received. He wasn’t going to hold any anyway, spokesperson LuAnne Canipe said, but (and these are my words, not hers) decided he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of representative democracy after witnessing the real anger nationally over the economic bailout and Obama’s health-care takeover.

Canipe explained that Miller had no plans for a town hall before and won’t be holding any now, due to this event and the examples he’s already seen from the around the country: “Our point is, we’re not gonna be bullied into having a town hall so it can then be interrupted by the fake grassroots folks.”

Instead, Miller says he’ll meet “one on one” with constituents, an inefficient use of time that even fictional Gov. Pappy O’Daniel of “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?” eschewed. “We ain’t one-at-a-timin’ here. We’re MASS communicatin’,” O’Daniel admonished his aides.

He’s not alone among North Carolina’s members of Congress. Carolina Journal Managing editor Rick Henderson wrote about our members of Congress and their phobia of meeting with constituents at CJ Online this morning.