Some more odds and ends, in no particular order…
After asking if Bob Etheridge is a hero, Mediaite’s Colby Hall has remained silent on the issue. Probably a good idea. That one made even his boss, Dan Abrams, scratch that thing on top of his head. No further word either from Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, who was holding out hope that maybe the kid spit on Etheridge… um, in-between calling him “Sir.”
Dave Weigel is vigorously defending his use of the word “hug” to describe Etheridge’s grasp on the kid. That’s the word Drudge picked up on, and Weigel got a lot of angry e-mail about it, and he doesn’t like the way FishbowlDC’s Betsy Rothstein is harping on it. She responds to Weigel: “While I appreciate your attempts to educate me in the area of hug verbiage, I do not believe ‘hug’ has any proper place in the incident of Etheridge grabbing the student in a near headlock or neck squeeze.” Well, technically speaking, Etheridge did have the kid in a hug at one point. It was after the wrist hug and the neck hug. Maybe people wouldn’t have picked on Weigel if his instinct wasn’t to ask why the kid didn’t respond promptly and properly to Etheridge’s enhanced interrogation techniques? In any case, I do not recommend saddling Weigel with the nickname “Huggy Bore.” That would be wrong.
Elsewhere at WaPo, Reliable Source’s Roxanne Roberts explains what those little punks were really up to:
It’s the perfect plan: What better way to look innocent than to be innocent? What better way to appear to be polite and nonviolent than to actually be polite and nonviolent? They ambushed Etheridge by asking him a question on a city street, and then they cleverly avoided returning his hostility in kind, all the better to make him look like the bad guy. Will these nefarious wingnuts stop at nothing??
Via Jim Geraghty at National Review, here’s some opinion from the Greensboro News Record in Etheridge’s home state of North Carolina:
Not surprisingly, some Republicans are calling for Lillington resident Etheridge to resign. For now, his relatively unknown opponent, Renee Ellmers of Dunn, says she’s not going to take advantage of the situation.
Yet the ugly incident should be fair game during the campaign. It’s up to Etheridge, who first was elected to Congress in 1996, to convince 2nd District voters that the inexcusable outburst was a one-time intemperate indiscretion, not a character flaw.
Try going up to somebody on the street and grabbing them like that. Make sure at least two cameras capture the event. Then tell the judge it was an “intemperate indiscretion.” Being a judge is stressful and he could probably use a chuckle.
Speaking of Ellmers, she’s sticking to this like glue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_9M1vo_BX0“If a teacher at my son’s school treated one of his students this way, it would raise serious questions and he would be suspended.” Well then, he should run for Congress instead!
Meanwhile, Andrew Marcus at Founding Bloggers takes his life into his own hands:
Enough with the ambush tactics, you fascists.
P.S. Iowahawk: Enter the Dragon.
P.P.S. If I had written this as a joke, I’d be accused of painting liberals with too broad a brush. (Thanks, AP.)