I try not to go off on a rant too much here. Anger clouds the judgment, and plus you can look really stupid in the light of day when it turns out you got the wrong end of the stick. But this really ticks me off:
TalkLeft: Young Republican Kicks Female Protester
Go see the video. While its hard to tell that GreenShirt was actually kicking the girl, the ABC reporter obviously has no doubts.
But what really ticks me off is that the protesters were the ones dragged off to jail while this guy gets to celebrate high-fives with his gang of young thugs. Over 1700 protesters arrested, and some of the worst violence took place inside the Garden and was perpetrated on a protester by one of the delegates. (Note: there was one policeman beaten at a demonstration, he is "recovering at home".)
But what really really ticks me off is that I didn't hear about this until Sunday evening. That that this story got virtually no airplay at all. Doing a Google News search on several different permutations finds exactly zero references. Why? I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks about the hijacking of the Wellstone funeral back in 2002, how the behavior of every liberal in attendance (or not) got analyzed into the ground. This RNC convention frankly sickened me in the way it spoke to people's basest emotions, even claiming a sense of nobility in hatred and meanness. Is it because meanness is what we expect in Republicans, while Democrats are supposed to be kind and forgiving? No--I know plenty of Repubs who are good honorable people. I really just don't understand the reason behind this double standard--and that makes me even angrier.
