Where Are the Demands for "Civility?"

By now you've probably seen video of Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge assaulting a student, in response to the student asking Etheridge whether he supports the policies of President Obama.

There's a second view, from a different angle.



So where are the strident denunciations, and demands for "civility" from the mainstream media and its favored elected officials?   Remember last summer, when those demands came fast and thick, after ordinary citizens attended town hall meetings and ... and ...

What was it those irksome citizens did again?   ...   Oh, right.   They expressed political views diverging from liberal orthodoxy.

For that, we were told, ad nauseam, they were a threat to democracy, they had debased public discourse by rendering it uncivil, they were intimidators, they were hate-mongers.

Then it reached a fever-pitch right after the health-care vote in March, with unproven accusations of violence against dissenters.

But a Democratic Congressman is caught on video assaulting a student and ... no complaints.

No surprises here, of course.   But it reminds us of the "brick through the window" incident at Monroe County Democratic headquarters last March, that made national news.   Had that turned out to be the work of a Tea Partier or someone sympathetic to the cause, it would have been all over the media.   Instead, we've had complete silence since the event was reported.   No media follow-up at all.

Probably the clearest sign, amid all the others, that it was a staged hoax:   an inside job, contrived to cast discredit on protesting citizens, to win sympathy for Democrats and deflect attention from their unsavory methods in ramming through the health-care bill.