Missing the point? How so? The rest of the post is ok. But the activist's story with which you begin the post doesn't strike me as anything even remotely unusual. Pretty much the same thing happens thousands of times per year, including during Clinton's term in office. Some hot-headed person writes or says something a little bit over the top, some neighbor or bystander reports him/her, and the Secret Service automatically has to investigate. Thus, I guess I'm questioning whether this story has any usefulness in serving as a launching pad for talking about our "increasingly corroded civic culture" or "be not afraid" or whatnot.
Find me the right-wing magazine or web site that gives a platform to lefties as frequently as Salon does the reverse.)
Well, for what it's worth, three of the Volokh Conspirators are Stuart Benjamin, Russell Korobkin, and David Post, all moderate/liberals. None of them happen to post very often, but that's apparently by their own choice. At any rate, Eugene Volokh let them be permanent members of his blog. Not quite the same sort of thing as Salon, but quite similar to Kevin Drum's actions (that is, if he had let Drezner have a permanent home at Washington Monthly.)
Well, the activist did have a sign that said, "Mr. Cheney, What You Sow You Shall Reap. Those Who Destroy the Earth Will Be Destroyed." That's what seems to have gotten the Secret Service's attention. She undoubtedly meant it metaphorically, no doubt; still, the Secret Service is duty-bound to investigate things that look like a threat. That sort of thing happens all the time -- thousands of times per year. A typical story:PALO ALTO [Nov. 27, 1997]- President Clinton's Secret Service agents searched the apartment of a student columnist for Cal's Daily Californian who wrote a satirical Big Game column mentioning Chelsea Clinton that appeared in the school paper last week.
The 22-year-old Senior student columnist, Guy Branum, said yesterday that the agents had told him the search and investigation were initiated by an angry Hillary Rodham Clinton.Or for some background:McCarthy, a former special agent in charge in the U.S. Secret Service, spoke to a group at the University of Nebraska at Kearney's 13th annual Regional Criminal Justice Conference.So just FYI.
...
McCarthy, who was involved in the protection of every president from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, said a sitting president receives 300 to 500 threats on his life per month. All the threats are investigated, and many are stopped by talking to the person, he said.
"A lot of it is stopped in its tracks just by listening," he said, referring to presidential threats and school shootings.
Aha, I think I misread your last sentence. You were saying, "Because they do this stuff [meaning that they complain about slights]," whereas I read it as, "Because they do this stuff [meaning that they promote Gannon at the National Press Club while ignoring left-wing bloggers]."
(This is neither here nor there, but I find it interesting that quite a few right-wingers claim to be unhappy with Bush for being too much of a moderate/liberal on a host of issues: Medicare, education, campaign finance reform, assault weapons, immigration, etc.)
Can you substantiate the notion that the National Press Club's event scheduling is handled or even remotely affected by anyone associated with the "crazy right wing"? It's a shame, of course, that Gannon ever dares to show his face in public again; but as Robert L. suggests, the very controversy around Gannon might be just the thing that attracts schedulers (i.e., infamous names draw an audience).
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| 2005 | 6 |
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