First of all, yes this is a diary about Cynthia McKinney and as I am a man of few words a sparse one at that. And no, this is not that important. No flame war in history has ever been about anything that important. That goes without saying. And no,
Bob, I don't really care whether anyone cares.
That being said, let me say this: Rosa Parks never punched a bus driver in the gut. Some here may have wanted her to and for the moment let me give the benefit of the doubt that this incidend was also racially motivated, but she never did. And we should be very lucky that she didn't.
Once you escalate things like that you have given up any right to be treated as the victim. You have given up any right for your conflict to be used as a civil rights fulcrum, as most who are judging you are most likely to be doing so based on the complexities of the relative morality of the two parties than as a parable on racism.
Whether or not racism has any involvement in this outside the right-wing blogosphere the right to assault a security officer under alleged provocation is not a civil right and I have a hard time believing that the wild race baiting that has been going on here does anything to help Democrats or African Americans.
One of the things to come out of the civil rights movement is the idea that when you're the underdog your most powerful weapon is purity. It has nothing to do with being fair or placing more blame on your side than on the other guy. It has to do with holding your side to a higher standard of morality and of argument and it has to do with winning.