As NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell accurately observed Tuesday, America's media have pounced on the University of California at Davis incident where Occupy protesters were pepper-sprayed by campus police.
Doing his part Wednesday was liberal radio host Ed Schultz who on his Thanksgiving Eve program actually equated this incident to the Rodney King beating (video follows with transcript and commentary):
ED SCHULTZ: It is amazing to me that there is a law enforcement official who felt it compelled – and I’m going to say something now that is really distasteful but I feel like I have to say it because I am a product of the sixties – this is how law enforcement got the term “pig.” This is how they got labeled “pigs.” And that term just turns my stomach. I equate this to the Rodney King beating. I really do. The action’s no different than taking a nightstick out on a guy or to go right up and pepper spray people right in the face when they’re absolutely harmless. What’s the difference?
Far more importantly, all these protesters had to do was stand up and disperse as they were being instructed and none of this would have happened.
In the media's rush to defend the students while castigating the campus police, they seem to forget that these protesters were illegally blocking a thoroughfare and refused to move.
It is indeed fascinating to watch so-called journalists take the side of lawbreakers when they share the political views of the agitators.
By contrast, when folks peaceably gathered in parks they rented to air grievances about how their tax dollars were being spent, they were labeled by these same media members as gun-toting, racist homophobes.
We Americans have surely learned a lesson in the past couple of years about what forms of civil disobedience will be tolerated by those lucky enough to make good money "reporting the news" to the citizenry.
(H/T Radio Equalizer via Right Scoop)
