What the Developing Liberal Narrative About Violent Conservatives May Mean

A few days ago, Pat Conlon at Born Again Redneck had a post on civility, or rather the growing lack of it in politics. A couple of us on the comment thread responded and Pat wrote another post, Born Again Redneck: Uncivil war contd.: "Never waste a crisis?", which discusses on our growing unease with the narrative that the mainstream media is creating concerning alleged violence prone red neck, tea party conservatives. Note the number of stories on this theme in the past weeks.

One local story in the Tennesseean about a 70 year old DUI who rammed the back of a car driven by a Nashville teacher and his child got picked up and spread nationally. The headline was "Victim of road rage sparked by Obama sticker pleads for civility." Read the story and you get the victim's point of view only. How can the victim be sure his car was being hit because of the sticker? Has the perpetrator gone on the record and said, yes, I hit the car because it had an Obama sticker on it? No Tennesseean reporter has yet talked to the perpetrator and there's been no follow up on this story for two days now.

Meanwhile, local TV station WKRN called the accused man, Harry Weisiger, who says he was only trying to get around another car that had stopped in front of him. "He slammed on his brakes, and I hit him in the bumper when I tried to go around him." WKRN concludes their report with this comment, "Weisiger did not mention the Obama bumper sticker when News 2 spoke with him on the phone Friday, but did admit fault for leaving the scene of the accident."

Was Weisiger's action prompted by the Obama sticker? The WKRN story says Weisiger "did not mention the Obama bumper sticker." Did their reporter fail to ask Weisiger directly about the bumper sticker as motive? If so, it's pretty shabby reporting, though not quite as bad as the Tennessean. I mean the sticker as the alleged motive is the story. That's why WKRN has the pic of the smashed bumper and the sticker on their website. So why not ask Weisiger about it directly?

Maybe Weisiger did act because of the Obama sticker. Right now, we don't know, and yet this piece of the media narrative spreads even wider with each passing day.

Now Glenn Beck is addressing the issue of the media/liberal narrative concerning violence supposedly perpetrated by conservatives. Conservative Lady provides a summary of Beck's show dealing with this issue and also has video of all four segments of that show. She says,

And they[the Obama administration 60's and 70's radicals who are now in charge] are trying to portray us as radical terrorists, just like they were back in the '60's. If they can discredit the Tea Partiers, egg them on to violence (or lie about it), then they will be able to convince the rest of America that we are the ones to fear and we should be defeated....It would take one act of real violence to destroy our entire cause. The 60's radicals who are running our country right now are wondering why we aren't acting the way they did back in the days of their protests. We are not who they are. Chances are they will continue to provoke us with the hopes that someone will snap. [Italics mine.]