Arrest Report

If you've read this site for just about any length of time you know that I've gotten used to being a speed bag for the Huffington Post peanut gallery. Whenever something of mine gets published over there, it's usually possible to count the minutes before the HuffPo readers -- some of whom are incredibly bright, some of whom may as well be free-range retards -- begin wondering aloud whether I'm a paid operative for Fox News or just your average Renfield-esque flunkie. This is probably because the pieces of mine that get posted there have tended, especially lately, to be more centrist than the mixed-bag you find here. And for the professionally pissed-off liberal Star Chamber that holds court round-the-clock in the Huffington Post comment section, my attempts at being reasonably moderate mean I may as well be pissing on a welfare baby while eating a Big Mac and plowing a Hummer through the front of a Whole Foods in the Haight.

So with that in mind you can imagine the kind of ire my recent piece on Cenk Uygur and the arrest of Nicole Sandler drew. To be honest, not a lot of people commented on it, but quite a few of the ones who did -- particularly Brad Friedman from the Brad Blog, some of whose work I happen to like but who I wound up getting into a ridiculously drawn-out debate with -- basically took me to task. To say that it doesn't bother me one way or the other and that I'm actually just entertained as hell by it is a pretty gross understatement. But what it proves is that while, no, the left and right are nowhere near the same -- not when it comes to the level of intellectually dishonest hypocrisy they're willing to spew or the incomprehensible lack of shame they regularly display -- blind tribal loyalty is as powerful at one end of the political spectrum as it is at the other. And even a little bit of straying off-message -- even from someone who's obviously, for the most part, on your side -- just cannot stand.

I normally post the best responses here, but to be honest the only thing really amusing is the back-and-forth between me and Friedman -- so I'll just refer you to the post at HuffPo and let you read for yourself.

Enjoy.

The Huffington Post: The Arrest of the Story/4.29.11

Arrest of the Story

I watched a segment a little while ago on the always delightful Cenk Uygur's show on MSNBC and to be honest the guy and his producers really deserve to be called out on a couple of things.

Uygur was interviewing Nicole Sandler, the South Florida radio host who managed to get arrested on Tuesday evening at a town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Allen West (R-Psychopath), and during his introduction he did something that was really misleading. He showed a clip of Sandler shouting a question at West -- what some considered a serious disruption but what didn't seem like a huge deal -- and following a very minor amount of resulting chaos, the video cut to images of a Fort Lauderdale cop putting Sandler's hands behind her back and cuffing her. Both the visual and the verbal implication from Uygur's voice-over made it crystal clear: Sandler shouted some questions at West and was arrested just a couple of seconds after and presumably for it.

Unfortunately, that's not what happened.

Sandler has posted the extended video over at her website -- in the interest of full disclosure, she's a member of the Banter Media Network -- and what it shows is that as the officer was escorting her out of the room she was giving him crap the entire way. Getting upset with a cop isn't generally an arrestable offense, but it is if you also don't do what that cop tells you to -- and that's what happened. He very calmly asked her to keep moving, she slowed down then stopped, stuck her finger in his face and yelled at him to get his hands off her and -- surprise, you're under arrest.

Now, did Nicole Sandler deserve to be escorted off the premises to begin with? Maybe not. Should Allen West be forced to answer for the unbelievable horseshit he spews? Absolutely. Is it a crime to shout questions at a congressman at a public town hall meeting? If it were the jails would've been filled with terrified and pissed off Republican old people a couple of summers ago. But you don't get to react with shock when you don't do what a police officer tells you to and he hauls you off to jail for it. You want to make a political statement and purposely get yourself arrested, that's one thing, but don't pretend that some great injustice has occurred -- and that you never saw it coming -- because you didn't follow a cop's instructions and he did his job.

Incidentally, Sandler's defiant act apparently didn't stop at the arrest. She said during the interview that she was maced in jail; when Uygur indignantly asked why, she essentially came right out and admitted that she argued with the officers, questioned everything they told her to do, wouldn't immediately follow their instructions. Again, is this a reason for someone to get maced? I can't say since I didn't see exactly what happened -- but throughout the entire interview I just kept shaking my head and remembering the Chris Rock bit about how you react when a cop tells you to do something: "Yes sir!" Jesus, even if you had made the conscious decision to really stick it to Allen West at his town meeting, consequences be damned, once you're actually in police custody and you've made your point you have nothing to gain by continuing to be antagonistic toward the police. Just who do you think has the upper hand in that test of wills?

Look, I swear I'm not really trying to beat up on Nicole Sandler; shouting down Allen West is an inarguably good thing if only because everyone will get a couple of seconds where they won't have to hear him. I'm actually more pissed at Uygur's complete and borderline unethical disregard for the truth -- for knowingly twisting events so that it all became "blue meat" for his and his audience's firmly held biases. That's the kind of crap Fox News pulls all the time and it shouldn't be acceptable -- even once in a while -- from those who constantly criticize Fox for it.

Oh yeah, one more thing -- both Cenk Uygur and the lower-third onscreen graphic kept insisting that Sandler had gone to "prison." No, she didn't. She went to jail -- there's a difference.

If Uygur's going to actually be allowed to play pro ball rather than being relegated to the farm league, he'd better start taking his game a hell of a lot more seriously.

Update

Here's the story as presented on Uygur's show tonight:



And here's the extended video: