I heard an invitation to a town hall meeting

Context
I answered the phone this afternoon and received a prerecorded invitation from my senator, David Vitter, to attend a town hall meeting. I cannot repeat it verbatim, but it went along the lines of, "I want to invite you to a town hall meeting to discuss important economic issues, including creating high-quality jobs for Louisiana, ending federal bailouts and cutting rampant federal spending . . . " At this point I hung up.

Commentary
Am I being unrealistically nostalgic, or didn't there use to be a time when "town hall" meant "Let's talk about issues and see how we want to resolve them," as opposed to "I already know the solution, I just want to get everyone together and tell them what it is"?

I'm not trying to be difficult. I recognize that I'm a liberal and Sen. Vitter is a Republican, so it's not necessarily realistic to expect that we will share political opinions in common. Moreover, he won the election so he has some assurance that the majority of Louisiana voters agree with his stand. So I have no problem with the idea that he's already made up his mind. It's the pretending that he's trying to get constituents together to gather feedback that bothers me.

What Senator Vitter is proposing is a rally, not a town hall meeting. He is up for reelection this year, so it's perfectly reasonable for him to have a rally to whip up support. But there's no need for him to invite me.

What did you hear today?