Well we knew it was going to happen. I'm just sorry to have to tell you that it happened in my home State of North Carolina. To a reporter, no less.
At the Sarah Palin rally in Elon, NC held on the baseball field of Elon University, a blogger for Capitol Beat in Raleigh NC was kicked in the back of the leg and fell to the ground due to his laughing at a group of Palin crazies screaming at a group of Obama supporters.
Below the fold, we can examine what happened from two different media sources.
From Mark Binker @ Greebsboro News and Record Capitol Beat
Report from Palin rally
There are certain things that get me really concerned when I hear them from someone I’m working with. Joe Killian (who blogs for the paper here and on his own time here) added a new one to my list:
Joe was working with me on a package for tomorrow's newspaper covering Gov. Sarah Palin's visit to Elon and Greensboro.
"Dude," he says when I called to check on him. "Some guy just kicked me in the back of the leg."
Let me just digress for a second. I sometimes supervise people. Much more often, I work in teams with folks. I'm usually the old fart in the group so I feel responsible for them. The last thing I ever want to hear is one of my people gets hurt on assignment. Usually the worry has to do with covering a traffic accident along a highway or a natural disaster like a flood, where conditions are inherently dangerous.
What I don't expect is for some troglidite at a campaign rally to decide that the propper way to express his frustration with Democrats, Barack Obama or the "left-wing liberal media" is to commit assualt on a colleague.
Here's the back-story:
As you probably know, the crowds at McCain-Palin events have gotten, um, saucy as of late. My boss blogs about that here.
Covering Sen. John McCain's apperance in Wilmington Monday, you could definitely sense some of that vibe.
Cut to today, Palin in town. In general, I walked in sensing the crowd had a more positive vibe than the McCain rally.
That changed when I heard a ruckous behind me. A couple folks there for the rally called campaign staff over complaining about people several rows back chanting "Obama" when the rest of the crowd cheered at Palin's applause lines. Obnoxious? Yes. But I dig me some first amendment.
The campaign staff dutifully fetched a couple of police officers who dutifulyl threw the handfull of individuals out. I watched just to make sure ruckous didn't develop into something more. That apparently gave other McCAin-Palin supporters license to yell at me.
"Hey! Hey you! The story's up there," yelled one point at the stage. "You don't need to worry about that. The story is up there."
The presence of a baricade, the more pressing need of gathering a story and, well, that whole first amendment thing just lead me to ignore them. They can pop off if they like.
Joe was near a second group of protestors who got tossed. And he got some push back for investigating as well. After the rally wound down, he went to find some Obama folks and see if he could talk to who got put out.
That's when at least one guy from the crowd decided he needed to interject his opinion into the conversation. As Joe tells it:
Well lets just head on over to Joe's blog, Automatic Writing, and let Joe Killian tell us in his own words just what exactly went down in Elon today.
How I Became Joe Sixpack
Was at the Sarah Palin rally at Elon University today.
It was an interesting day and I’m glad to have had the experience. But now here I sit, sunburned and sore with a throbbing headache and an aching leg.
Why? Because a McCain-Palin supporter tried to kick my ass.
I know what you’re thinking.
But no, I didn’t have it coming.
What happened, briefly, is this:
After Hank Williams Jr. had finished his set of country standards ("I Walk The Line") Country pandering (the theme from The Dukes of Hazard) and re-arranged original hits with new lyrics ("McCain-Palin Tradition"), Sarah Palin arrived to cheers, screams and adoration that rivaled Greensboro’s Obama rally.
"GOD BLESS YOU SARAH PALIN!" one man shouted.
But not everyone was overjoyed to see her.
Weaved in amongst the crowd were a what looked like a few dozen Obama supporters - some wearing Obama shirts, others in street clothes. As Palin got into her speech they began chants of "Obama" and screamed out rebuttals to the points in her speech. This angered some in the crowd — some responding with cursing, others chanting "U.S.A." and "NObama" to drown them out. Eventually the cops came and escorted them off of the baseball field.
Then it happened again, elsewhere in the crowd.
N&R political reporter Mark Binker and I were on different sides of the crowd - but we both got the same reaction from Palin fans as we craned our necks to see what the disturbance was.
"That’s not the story, the story’s up there on the stage!" someone yelled at Binker.
"Ain’t nothing to look at and don’t you write about it!" I was told.
To her credit: Palin stopped the speech to suggest that maybe the security shouldn’t escort the protesters off — maybe they should "stay and learn something."
Not so very to her credit: she did not actually instruct security to let them stay.
After the speech was over I was walking around getting peoples’ reactions to it when I wandered into several clusters of sign waving Obama supporters outside the stadium area. They were surrounded by McCain-Palin folks and both sides were yelling at each other.
I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.
As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.
"Hey, hey," I said. "I’m trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?"
The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.
This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.
It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.
"Oh, you think that’s funny?!" the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that’s real funny..." he said.
And then he kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.
From my position there I saw the bottoms of a number of feet almost accidentally stomping me to death as the two political camps screamed back and forth, the music continued to blare and some of the Obama crowd moved the large bearded man and his friends away. When I was helped to my feet the bearded man was walking away quickly.
For a moment I considered running the bloated, twelve-sandwich eating prick down and beating the living hell out of him...and then I remembered that I’m a reporter, how much I enjoy being gainfully employed and how hard it would be to keep my job if I got into a fistfight with a guy at a political rally.
So instead I limped off to try to find a security guard or cop.
When I did the guy was nowhere to be found.
"He’s this big fat guy with a brown beard and he’s wearing a McCain-Palin shirt and hat," I said.
And then felt like an idiot. I was surrounded by people who fit that description.
So I simply limped to my car fuming.
Please take the time to read both entire accounts in the links above, Mark Binkers account as well as Joe Killians. I can only say that not unlike Joe Killian, I came away from this fuming myself.