The same media that hyperventilates about civility whenever Democrats or Barack Obama are mistreated, show no similar concern when Republicans are on the receiving end even at the very same time.  Compare the media outrage at claims that John Lewis was spit and the inattention at the recorded beating up by union men of a Black Republican, Kenneth Gladney, while handing out flyers at a Tea Party. It took place after Barack Obama’s men personally urged their followers to punch back twice as hard. No one noted that the violence followed such incitement. Moreover, it took the police months to arrest anybody and then they were charged with mere misdemeanor.

Consider the case of Jewish Republican Eric Cantor who had a bullt fired through his office window.

 

Philadelphia resident Norman Leboon, 33, was charged for posting a YouTube video in which he threatened to kill Cantor and his family, just days after a bullet was fired through the window of Cantor’s Richmond campaign office by an unknown gunman.”You receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer’s abominations,” Leboon reportedly said in the video. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Leboon is a Barack Obama supporter, who donated $505 to the Democratic National Committee in June, 2008.

A discussion of the matter at In side Washington before the arrest was made demonstrates the double standard not only of the media but also the police.

 

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: You showed Eric Cantor protesting how Democrats have turned this into a partisan, anti-Republican issue. How come you didn’t mention that his offices in Richmond had taken a bullet?MR. PETERSON: Well, the police say it was – the bullet was on a downward trajectory, meaning somebody fired it up into the air. There’re some questions as to whether it was vandalism.

MR. KING: It wasn’t aimed at him.

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Were you there?

MR. KING: No, the police said that.

MS. TOTENBERG: It was at one in the morning. It was one in the morning. It’s – come on, come on, come on. This is stupid.

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Can I say anything –

MS. TOTENBERG: No. This is stupid. (Cross talk.)

MR. KING: I want to hear Charles.

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: I think it’s a remarkable coincidence that a bullet goes in the air and ends up in the office of a representative in the House of Representatives who’s a Republican. I think you might at least have mentioned it. And I think what’s going on here is all of this is being traced to rhetoric on the part of Republicans. This is free country. This was an impassioned debate over an extremely important issue. I did not hear incitement to any violence on the part of any officials in the Republican Party. And to attribute nut cases and loonies and people holding a sign to Republican leadership is partisan rubbish.

MS. TOTENBERG: On the floor of the House, when Stupak spoke, one of his Republican colleagues yelled out, “baby killer.” This is not – we should be going there and I wouldn’t care if it was the flipside either.

MR. PETERSON: Let’s have more on this talk of violence, next.

Democratic offices trashed around the country. Somebody cut the gas line at the house of the brother of the Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello. They got the wrong man apparently. Anyway, this is a kind of thing that makes people very nervous, Charles?

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the only bullet fired in this episode is one that went through a window and into the offices of Eric Cantor, the number three guy in the Republican Party in the House. But I’m told I shouldn’t worry about it because the bullet was on its way down instead of on its way up.

How many of you have gotten a bullet in your offices, going up or down, and what was somebody doing firing up or down outside of his offices?

Secondly, I would say that during the Bush years, when there was all kinds of hate speech, accusations of Bush being a Nazi, war criminals, “The New Republic” started an article with “I hate George Bush,” I don’t remember anybody here protesting about hate speech or over-the-top language.

MR. PETERSON: Colby.

MR. KING: The police said that the bullet may have been fired in another area and may have been virtually going to that building where he happened to have an office, but that’s beside the point. What did happen last Sunday was that you had members of Congress cheering demonstrators who were disrupting the floor of the House and those were Republican congressmen.

MS. TOTENBERG: The point is not who gets threatened. The point is that there are these kinds of threats. And it can get very much out of hand. It’s going in that direction at the moment.

MR. SHIELDS: A cautionary note. Evan Thomas’s grandfather, the great Norman Thomas, told the antiwar protesters at the height of that frenzy, “don’t burn the American flag. Wash it.” That is wise counsel to anybody who wants to have a political effect rather than just threaten their fellow Americans.

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Well, let’s all agree on that.

MS. TOTENBERG: We all agree. The question –

MR. SHIELDS: The cutting of the gas line into somebody’s house is violation, is a criminal act and ought to be prosecuted.

MR. KRAUTHAMMER: Who disagrees with that?

This is the type of  hate”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6b1VOAATNk”>hate speech Krauthammer was referencing. Try to remember any media outrage against it.

Also see my HNN blog Deja Vu

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