[TW for sexual assault and total asshattery]
From Salon:
In the parallel media universe of the right-wing blogosphere, this is the single biggest story of the week. Maybe the month, even. A union thug viciously attacked an innocent young woman, in broad daylight. And it’s all on camera!
Or, like, a guy pushed a camera that was 6 inches from his face, wielded by someone engaging him in a heated argument. You be the judge!
Video is embedded at Salon‘s site. When I first saw the video, I assumed her hit her, like with his fist, because Michelle Malkin made it seem like we were lucky that Ms. Hale wasn’t in the hospital. I don’t ever think that anyone ever should touch someone else in any way that is aggressive ever. I am not advocating that or calling for that or supporting that. And I really wouldn’t even have a problem with Ms. Hale taking to the internets and spreading this around and yapping it up about this union guy (if I did, I would be on here everyday complaining about Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, or Malkin then, wouldn’t I?).
This is time is different. Because Ms. Hale goes WAY TOO FAR in trying to make her point about how terrible this entire episode was. She compares herself directly with LARA LOGAN and sexual assault victims who are blamed for their sexual assault.
But this IS NOT in any way remotely similar to what happened to Lara Logan in Egypt. And to say that it is – well, that’s reprehensible, disgusting, and completely downplays, even disregards, the brutality of the sexual assault and beating that Ms. Logan was very lucky to survive. But Ms. Hale says it anyway:
This just can’t be tolerated anymore. It’s one thing to be called a violent teabagger. It’s another to be called a violent teabagger while you’re being assaulted. They’ve been comparing themselves to the Egyptians ousting Mubarak. Looks like they’re not too far off, given that they share the tendency to assault women with cameras.
In addition, it’s disgusting to me that the first response I received from the Left was rationalization. “You were too close, respect personal space” and “well he obviously didn’t want to be filmed!” – essentially, it’s the “her skirt was too short” defense.
I’m not sure who Ms. Hale thinks she is fooling by insinuating that she and her colleagues were not there to trying to incite anger in the protesters. Otherwise, why were they there? Simply to film some people yelling some things, people who they openly and happily disagree with? To tell the story of the plight of the blue collar worker? No. It was on purpose to cause something like this to happen so they could post it everywhere. And all the better that it was a “5′1 female in a dress” who can stand in as the ultimate victim of “thuggery.” (Why else would Ms. Hale need to tell us that? Unless she somehow thinks it will make us MORE enraged at what has happened – the union guy didn’t just push anyone’s camera away – he pushed a FEMALE. And not just a regular ol’ female – a female in the most feminine clothes ever – a DRESS!).
Ms. Hale, you were NOT brutally sexually assaulted. You were NOT separated from your crew for minutes in a huge crowd as multiple men harmed you in multiple ways. You did NOT need a group of women backed by 20(!) soldiers to save you from your attackers. You were NOT simply there to record what was happening. In all these ways, you are NOT Lara Logan.
As Alex Pareene says at Salon:
Because these people are completely fucking shameless, the woman from the video has compared herself to Lara Logan. I am not making that up. I wish I was making that up. But I would actually not make that up, because it would seem beyond the pale to accuse conservative activists of being so horrible, so desperate to play the victim, so morally depraved, so deep into their persecution fantasies that they’ve lost all perspective on the rest of the world.
For the sake of actual sexual assault victims and for the love of Lara Logan, Tabitha Hale, shut the fuck up.
Jessica Luther 
I’ve been over at Tabitha Hale’s facebook fan page, trying to talk sense. I feel like I’m spitting into the wind.
Did Tabitha Hale deserve to get pushed? No. It was rude and the old, angry Union worker should have apologized.
But does a push that results in no injury or damage to property constitute an “assault by a thug”? Not in a BZILLION YEARS. Not unless you have the most weak-tea, milquetoast definition of “assault” or “thug.”
If that man was a THUG, he was the worst THUG in history.
Ah, all my comments on Tabitha Hale’s page have been redacted. I thought it would happen some time. But I was still surprised when it did.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
You went straight into the lion’s den, huh?
I except this kind of sensationalism. But to then try to argue that you didn’t go there specifically to incite is incredibly disingenuous and says a lot about what they think about their audience.
My comments have all been redacted from Tabitha Hale’s facebook page and I’ve been blocked from posting any more by her admins. I was not being rude, but Tabitha Hale’s admins have the right to block or redact my comments for whatever reason they chose. It’s not censorship. It’s her page.
I wrote Tabitha Hale an e-mail, and she graciously responded. We corresponded several times yesterday, but it ultimately didn’t end well. She became annoyed with the length of my responses and the fact that I refused to define a rude push from an angry, cold, old man that resulted in no injury or damage to property as “an assault by a thug.”
I became annoyed, because it seemed Tabitha Hale is eager to brand all Union Workers as “thugs,” based on the thinnest of evidence. She seems more interested in dismissing people with name-calling, than seriously debating the issues at hand.