That was in fun (with a bite, yeppers!) and that LTC will pay in the club forever.
Here's someone far more deserving of our scorn and opprobrium. Far, far, far more deserving.
See him in context here.
Perhaps his union should withdraw his T-shirt privileges?
This story certainly resonates across the right side of the 'sphere. Aside from blaming the father for bringing his young daughter there (a perfectly valid criticism in some respects, but only if you accept the fact that the other side is going to behave beastfully) I wonder what the left side of the 'sphere is/will say about this. I don't have time today to check for myself, so feel free to add links and comments if you find their response.
Hopefully the Kerry-Edwards campaign will come out swinging on it. They want to lead - well then - LEAD!
UPDATE: Reading the comments, there is some indication that the father in this case does this sort of thing somewhat routinely. Okay, fine. That doesn't excuse the behavior of the Kerry supporters. It certainly makes Dad less the martyr perhaps (though what about that tolerate dissent thing?) but it doesn't excuse mobbing the 3 year old.
Yeah, I go to insert myself into the opposition's rallies, I've got to expect some verbal abuse. I can accept that. I can understand law enforcement or rally sponsors making me leave, to reduce the tension, too, as long as it's not a completely public place and some accomodation is made to allow protest (even if we don't like being herded behind barriers or whatever - public safety is a legitimate concern. But you don't get to physically intimidate or attack me. The old saw of "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose starts" comes to mind. If that's the best you can do - you're a wuss, and intellectually disabled. We can talk all we want about the wisdom of taking a child that young to something she's expecting to be fun - but that isn't the issue.
The attack is the issue. The asshat is an asshat. Dad may be one, too. But that ain't the issue, either.
Mugging the little girl is the issue.
The Right is all over it (d-uh):
Dean's World
Wes Roth
Allah
Marcland
Traveling Shoes
Wizbang
Captain's Quarters
Milblog
Little Green Footballs
Powerline
Instapundit
Dislogue
I was going to start an Asshat Gallery - but it's already been done - When Idio-Libs attack.
BTW - you got pics of Bush-Cheney supporters behaving like this - I'll post them and mock them mercilessly, too. Asshats are asshats, and there's no such thing as "But he's our asshat!" at Castle Argghhh!
Update II: Jack at Random Fate takes me up on that "He's not our Asshat" thing. And again, here.
Update III: There are alternate views, mainly dealing with the father, or with the perception of an imbalanced response, like Jack of Random Fate talked about.
esoterically.net
Jeremy's Jeremiad
Atrios chimes in.
Rising Hegemon The blogosphere truth squad pajamahadeen should be able to jump on RH's contention of the possibility that the union stooge is a Parlock scion. If it's true - Parlock is dumber than Rather. Get to work, kiddoes.
Then there is this conflation of a theme over at Blogumentary.
I reiterate: Mugging the little girl is the issue.
But the blogosphere is taking it elsewhere - unless Rising Hegemon's contention is true - then the left wing of the Truth Squad is dancing in the goalposts. As they should.
Update IV: Phil Parlock makes the same argument I did in some offline commentary - small as Huntington, WV is, Parlock would have to be as stupid as Dan Rather is being over MemoForger to have tried to pull a stunt like this off in the age of the Internet. Of course, as Dan is discovering, it's pretty hard - but it isn't hard to be dense about it.
Michelle Malkin called Phil Parlock and asked straight out. Keep an eye on Michelle - she's called the Union and is hoping for a call-back. C'mon, West Virginians - someone knows who that punk is.
UPDATE V. The Union might just know who the punk is - depending on how you read this statement from the Union President. Has the Kerry Campaign had anything to say?
UPDATE VI. The blogosphere makes the Huntington paper. My verdict? The goon is not Parlock's son. The Union knows who it is. Parlock is exercising his rights - but he's an idiot for taking his children to events where he knows he's going to be provocative. Different thing entirely from what Citizen Smash and Da Goddess do.
.
Phil Parlock did the same thing at a Gore rally in 2000 and at a Clinton rally in 1996. One of the DU kooks did a Lexus/Nexus search - thread here. [They also claim the guy in the hat is a junior Parlock, and I dunno about that, but even moonbats can do Lexus/Nexus.]
In both 1996 and 2000 he brought his kids to a Dem rally and waved Republican signs around, and both times wound up getting allegedly strongarmed and letting the press hear all about it. Bad luck follows wherever he goes, it would seem.
The 2000 Gore rally:
As the rally got going, they started raising their signs and people immediately began stealing them, Parlock said."Three guys came up and squeezed me in and one grabbed my arms and pulled them down and another took the sign," Parlock said.
"Another guy came up and tried to grab the sign but I had a good hold of it and he stumbled and bumped into other people and started a ruckus," he said. Parlock said the police ejected the man from the rally.
At the 1996 Clinton rally:
Phil Parlock's experience was less calm. The Huntington man said he was knocked to the ground by a Clinton supporter when he tried to display a sign that read "Remember Vince Foster," the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in a Washington, D.C., park. His death has become the subject of much debate among Clinton opponents. "It must have been a strict Democrat who did this," Parlock said, feeling the red abrasions on his face. "Everyone with the exception of him was real peaceful about our protest."
Both articles from the Charleston Daily Mail.
I think he's a provocateur. Simply as that. I think he brings the kids to get to the soccer moms.
I've been posting this stuff everywhere because I don't want to see our side to get CBSed into believing hoaxes simply because we want to believe them.
Check the evidence and make up your own minds.
FYI:
"Brian the Republican" has spent his entire morning posting his comments on every blog with this entry. I think the man is doing a lot of work on behalf of excusing violent acts by Democrats. He is to be commended on his charity for those with whom he disagrees.
I don't buy Brian's mini-skirt defense and neither should you. A little girl and her father have a reasonable expectation that they will not be assaulted at political rallies in a free country, even opposition rallies; just as a woman has a reasonable expectation that she can wear a mini-skirt in a bar and not be raped.
Shame on Brian!
SAS:
Yep. I've been following Powerline's trackbacks.
Why? Well, I'm home for Edgar G. Ulmer day (one of my holidays), and what's more I think it's important that - if the photo is something other than what it seems - we don't bet the farm on it the way CBS did with Memogate.
The guy does this same routine every election cycle and then goes to the press about it. All I'm saying is, nutty as the moonbats are, maybe it's him who's the problem.
Believe what you want.
John, I have big issues with a father taking his little girl to an event where he will deliberately provoke a reaction. BOTH sides are guilty of behaving badly. Recall my post on how protesters who made it into the Republican convention were kicked by someone while being held down by security with a link to the video? The post is here:
http://www.randomfate.net/RF-new/archives/001065.html
Note that the person being kicked is a woman, and the kicker can be assumed to be a Republican and a Bush supporter. In my mind, even if the protester was "asking for it", kicking is out of line and far worse than what is described as "mugging a little girl" who's father placed her in a position where he should have known that at the least there would be shouting. I don't know of many little girls that wouldn't cry when shouting is directed towards their father.
So... looks to me that the "family values" party has men who don't value their families enough to keep their little girls out of bad and potentially violent situations, and the right-wingers who are calling for civility here never complained about the woman being kicked during the Republican convention.
Yes, this has pissed me off, because BOTH sides are behaving badly, and NEITHER side is policing themselves, instead they are trying to score cheap points every time something stupid like this happens.
Brian,
Do I care if Phil Parlow makes his living as a performance artist/political protester with his children?
No.
Does Phil Parlock have the same reasonable expectation that he should be allowed to express his message free from assault as the guitar player on the corner?
Yes, at least as much. Do you disagree?
The fool you're implicitly defending has probably never even seenThe Man From Planet X and here you are wasting this special day.
Parlow, Parlock... whatever. Sorry about that :-D
Yeah, I got it on my blog too. Notice the scum isn't the only one who takes pleasure in seeing the girl cry. Other Kerry supporters also enjoy it.
It's that mental sickness in the Democrat party.
So, are you saying that the father has been positively identified as Phil Parlock?
Or is this just what Democrats jump to anytime someone misbehaves?
And Jack - I expect Americans to be civil to each other when there are children around.
No excuses for anyone who makes that little girl cry.
Yes, Beth - he's been positively identified.
And interviewed by Michelle Malkin.
Ah - just went to Powerline, and apparently, the man does go to rally's with his huge family, and they have been jumped on before - that doesn't mean that the family is wrong - it means that in West Virginia, Democrats are mean as hell.
Still no excuse.
And it is apparently not a hoax, as the union president is apologizing all over the place.
Parlock was also interviewed on the Glenn Beck radio show this morning.
Parlock's a bit of an ass. He does this knowing he's going to get a reaction. He'd probably stop doing it if the Dems stopped acting like brownshirts.
I don't think the mugging of the girl is the issue. I think the fact that the Kerry campaign hasn't said a damn thing about it is more of an issue. At least the union stood up and said it was wrong, even if they didn't ID the perp. More than can be said for Kerry or Edwards.
Well, Dave, I can agree with that now... that I've given the Kerry campaign a full workday to address it...
And near as I can tell - they haven't. They are hoping it will just die with the weekend.
SAS: Hello again.
I'm not defending political violence, I'm questioning whether political violence took place.
All we see in that picture is a crying kid, and all the testimony we have is from a guy whom I don't consider fully trustworthy, due to his past history and motivations.
A commenter here links a story which puts Parlock at that gathering at GOP headquarters a few months ago which was shot at by an unknown gunman. My eyebrow raised a bit when I read that.
Captain Ed has doubts too.
But it was a fine holiday yesterday: I finally saw Bluebeard, in which John Carradine kicked all kinds of ass.
Parlock indeed has experience in this activity and has repeated the behavior many times. Signs, umbrellas, bags, stollers, packages, etc were NOT allowed through the gate. Parlock smuggled the signs in in his pant leg and is lucky secret service didn't arrest him.
Kerry supporters tried to hold their sign in front of him which angered Parlock. He hoisted his young daughter, who was confused by the action, on his shoulders and shoved the sign in her hands. She didn't know what Daddy was doing and was scared to death. THAT'S what made the child cry and YES, I was there standing one person away from Parlock. I'm not Brian, I am a Huntington WV resident who is infuriated that Phil Parlock makes such a sham out of MY party. The republican party!
Do some googling on Parlock.
Want more proof it was staged? How bout Parlock leaving the area, going immediately outside to use his cellphone to talk with a reporter that took the picture. When did they exchange information considering the reporter was talking from INSIDE the building and Parlock was near the parking lot? No, he didn't stop on the way out.
Huntington has 50,000 people. It is not a small town and most of us wouldn't recognize Parlock's son if he stood beside us and introduced himself so there's much speculation that the union Kerry supporter was Parlock's oldest. Plus many of the supporters were from Ashland, a community about the same size, and other areas in the tri-state.
Sorry to be so aggressive but this crap makes me angry and Phil's been doing it for years. Interesting that no mention has been made of Phil shoving the college kid. Didn't see that myself but heard about it.
He is a publicity hound and in my opinion not a considerate father.
I live in a town that size. Someone knows who that character is.
And, as I mentioned before - the Union seems to know, too. If it was Parlock's son, don't you think they'd be all over it?
All of the above is beside the point. Anyone who shows up at a public gathering wearing a baseball cap turned backwards had better wear a contrite mild aspect, and conduct his body language in a similar way, lest he be the (and righteously so) sockEE instead of sockER! I mean, that guy appears to be half my age and twice my size, but even wussy YT would have to restrain hisself from doing something nasty and counterproductive if confronted by somebody like that!
Ok, I agree with most of this, but one point more than others. I DO NOT CARE IF THIS WAS STAGED OR NOT, but why did NO ONE step in to help a THREE YEAR OLD GIRL? Now, from my blog, here are some points....
1. If it was staged, it will backfire (instead of just making us look like we want to make them look bad, both sides look bad IE - NO ONE HELPED THE CHILD)
2. If it was staged (and as long as Parlock is not a Dem working with them to "make the other side look bad") how did anyone else get his family photo, unless they are THIEVES?
3. If it was not staged, and Phil just suffered from a lapse in judgement by taking his daughter, that makes the idio-libs not only JERKS for attacking a THREE YEAR OLD, but also LIARS for yelling it was staged and presenting a FAKE family photo.
We do not and probably will never know the entire story, but this will not change. WHY DID NO ONE HELP HER? Staged or not, all of the by-standers are guilty of not helping her, and therefore just as guilty as the attacker.
Monty
http://patriotism101.blogspot.com
http://whenidiolibsattack.blogspot.com
P.S. Like here, I will report ANY attack (no matter what "side" the attacker(s) represent. We do not need this type of politics, and NO ONE will be tolerated in doing this!
Let's not forget that the Left routinely target children: http://dagoddess.com/archives/002032.php (it's toward the end of the post) and http://dagoddess.com/archives/002076.php (mid-post)
I posted this on Dean's and Ara's sites as well.
Malkin says the union found the guy who tore up the little girl's sign and is dealing with the individual:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000558.htm
It looks much less like a hoax.
My wife used to work for ACORN, an old left-wing activist organization from the sixties. They were past masters at provoking responses, especially from the police. Maybe Parlock has a similar genius. Maybe he just got tried of being harrassed and decided to make the harrassers pay through bad PR. We won't know unless someone goes and asks. Care to try a phone interview with the IUPAT and Parlock?
Yours,
Wince
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