What did he throw?
Etheridge? He threw his hand behind the kid’s head.
This is what I saw in the video: A guy is heckled, he get’s annoyed and smacks the camera. Not the best thing, but it’s human. Then the kid gets in his face asking “questions” and the guy grabs his wrist to say “you are pissing me off here buddy”
But some of you people…
Damn.
I see posts in this thread that are trying to infer that that the kid was curb-stomped by the congressmen. It is NOT EVEN REMOTELY VIOLENT. Hell, “punch buggy” is more violent. There was nothing thrown, there was no punches thrown, there wasn’t even a shove. You are losing your shit over an incident where nobody even shoved the other. What the fuck is that about?
Well, liberal hypocrisy, of course. Duh.
OK, he didn’t throw anything–but you mentioned hitting someone with a blunt object in your post so I was just going off that.
In what world is grabbing someone’s wrist and then putting your arm around their neck not violent? If I know you and we’re good friends, then yeah, maybe you can do that to me. But if you don’t know me–no. You don’t get to touch me at all. Especially not like that. To me, that’s assault.
John Bernard Books: *I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them. *-The Shootist
Etheridge laid a-hand on that kid.
This is apropos.
And let’s stop calling the guy a “kid”. He’s a full grown man.
No he wasn’t. He was a young, puny kid. Etheridge had height, weight, reach, and attitude on the kid.
I’ll give you the height, but do you honestly the 20 year old couldn’t have broken out of the 57 year old pencil pusher’s wrist grip of death?
Answer me a question.: If you were a cop and saw this, would you charge anybody with assault?
(bolding mine) The video was heavily edited. We don’t actually know this.
Well, yeah. He was a little twerp.
Seriously, I wouldn’t call it a vicious attack, but it was assault (remember, assault = threat of battery, not necessarily actual violence). Sure, if you want to measure him against Sean Penn or Buzz Aldrin, he was restrained, but why on earth would you consider those the standard to measure reactions to mildly annoying questions?
Further, Penn and Aldrin aren’t elected officials. This guy is. Public image is everything. He acted without due provocation based on the evidence provided.
Granted, as we’ve seen with O’Keefe, the evidence provided may not be anywhere near the whole story. But it’s awful hard to take Etheridge’s actions out of context, unless the twerp insulted his mother or something.
Turns out that this ‘student’ was a plant by Breitbart. You know, the guy who set up that whole ACORN nonsense. This is why we try to get context before snap judgments.
But you do shove cameras in their faces and block the sidewalk and keep pestering them with inanities.
So what? Nobody’s going to care. Even if he was 100% justified in his actions, that’s not what’s going to get played on every TV network for the next week. Like I said:
What a bunch if whiny babies the right has become. “He touched me, wah, wah, wah.”
ETA: and by the way, it would be battery.
Does that matter, though? Even if he is, that doesn’t give the guy the right to knock his camera away or grab him.
I know that the rep was ambushed on a public street, but inebriated or not he should be well trained by this point in time that if someone accosts you asking questions, if you are not up to answering at that specific time to reach into your pocket, get out a card and tell the people to contact your secretary for an appointment as you will not answer questions on the street. It is called impulse control, most people tend to learn it by that age if they are in the political realm [well, maybe not bill clinton or any kennedy:rolleyes:]
As it came off, I don’t care if the kid was pushy and assholish, you still don’t grab them, that becomes battery. You can turn and walk away stating no comment, not grabbing someone and repeatedly asking them who they are. It wasnt like the kid had him shoved in a corner in an alley.
Yes, it does matter. This is not an innocent kid. This is a guy who purposely picked a fight and then filmed the reaction. You might as well rally behind Tom Green or Ashton Kutcher.
I don’t think the “kid” was going to let him do that.
“I want my two dollars!”