Some more odds and ends from this incident that a lot of people wish would just go away already:
- Several commenters have noticed an odd detail about Etheridge’s pseudo-apology: He starts by saying, “I have seen the video posted on several blogs.” So… was that the first he’d heard about it? After all, he was there. Does he not remember what happened? If not, why not?
- The Washington Post‘s Reliable Source asks: “Rep. Bob Etheridge gets vicious in viral video — but who filmed it and why?” I ask: Why does it matter? Will Etheridge’s behavior somehow become acceptable if it turns out the victim is somebody you don’t like?
- Although they do make a good point: Etheridge only grabbed the kid by the wrist and neck, swatted at his camera, breathed in his face, and stole his phone, all while demanding the kid’s identity and declaring a “right” Etheridge didn’t really have. It’s not like he called the lad “macaca.”
- Elsewhere at the Post, on their adorably titled PostPartisan blog, Jonathan Capehart avers: “By grabbing the arm of someone who said he was a student working on a project and then grabbing him by the neck after not being told where he went to school, Etheridge displayed thuggish behavior that must never be condoned. Not when it’s done by rowdy Tea Partiers outside the Capitol, and certainly not by people who are elected to serve there.” Hey, remember when those rowdy Tea Partiers physically assaulted somebody? Me neither. Not at the Capitol or anywhere else. If there’s a case of Tea Party violence in which a Tea Partier wasn’t the victim, it has yet to be reported. But hey, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, right, Jonathan?
- Ed Driscoll has the Quotes of the Day. Thanks for the advice, Kos!
- Everybody’s being mean to Dave Weigel.
- If there’s a lesson in all this, I think it’s that a lack of evidence doesn’t prove that something didn’t happen, as long as the person claiming it did happen is a liberal. For example, you can claim somebody yelled out a racial slur in a large group of people with electronic recording devices, and the subsequent lack of evidence, or even evidence to the contrary, means nothing. Whereas a surfeit of evidence doesn’t mean much, as long as the person presenting it isn’t a liberal. In this case, we’ve got two different cameras recording a public assault. But so what? It all depends on which side could be damaged. Good luck selling your newspapers, my friends.