I posted on 09/24/04 and 09/28/04 about Foster Barton, the young Ohio soldier and Purple Heart recipient on leave from the Iraq War.
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, the Freeper network, and, last but not least, the Drudge Report, Barton became an instant hero/martyr for the rightwing war fans. Not for his Purple Heart. Republicans are pretty dubious of those these days, since John Kerry won three of them. But because he was attcked from behind after a Toby Keith concert by someone shouting about soldiers.
In those two previous posts, I quoted a sample of some of the frenzied Freeper prose about what this meant for the decadence of the antiwar movement and the Kerry campaign, although the news about the attack on Barton gave no indication that the assailant was actually associated with either.
So I've been checking every day with Web searches to see if there was more news on the case. All the searches turn up are multiple versions of the Freeper version of the story, and endless reprints of the frivolous Jan Ireland article I quoted in one of those earlier posts.
So I went back to the Web site of the local NBC affiliate, which provided the news report that most people have used, and did a search there.
Holy justice system, Batman! The police have made an arrest in the case.
Now, maybe this is all over FreeperWorld (the story first appeared last night). But I was shocked, shocked to see no mention of it in the Web searches, at RepublicanJen's blog or on Drudge. I would have thought that "Marine veteran JKARLUSMC" would have posted another comment on it by now.
Here's the story: Barton Allegedly Attacked at Concert NBC4i.com 09/28/04 (updated 09/29/04). Nothing in the story contradicts what the Freepers so eagerly assumed. But it also doesn't fit neatly into their version either:
Brent Cornwell, 28, of Blacklick, was arrested Tuesday night by Columbus police. He was charged with felonious assault Wednesday morning at a Delaware County Municipal Court video arraignment.
A judge set bond at $15,000. Cornwell was ordered to be on house arrest. ...
Barton said his attacker beat him up because he was wearing an Operation Iraqi Freedom T-shirt. Barton was beaten so badly that he was knocked unconscious.
Police said witnesses at the scene and the suspect's own family helped police make an arrest, Laven reported. Police said Cornwell, who spent four years in the Army, called a morning radio show last week and said he wanted to give his side of the story, Laven reported. [emphasis added]
Now, having followed this and having taken the occasion to use the Freepers' processing of this story as an example of a larger trend, I'm curious to see how this comes out. It's entirely possible that Cornwell, if he committed the assault, was part of some radical antiwar group. But so far, there's not the slightest suggestion of that.
But the Freepers wanted this to be a story about cowardly antiwar wimps hating our brave men and women in uniform. So it's hard to guess which the Freepers would consider worse at this point: having Cornwell turn out to be a violent nut or a personal enemy of Barton with no political motives in the attack; or, having four year Army veteran Cornwell turn out to be an antiwar militant.
"Developing ...", as they say on the Drudge Report.
6 comments:
The guy is probably a creep, like so many creeps I run into at Yankees games and Jets games here in the NY area, and not unlike the creeps you can run into at your average rock concert. People on drugs or excessive quantities of their favorite beverage.
Why this rises to the level of a serious political discussion would be beyond me if I hadn't been living in America for the past 8 years. In short, this tale is full of sound and fury and signifies nothing at all.
Eight years ago, we won the White House and the attack dogs started their campaign to drive our President out of office. Remember Whitewater? It had less substance than the Barton story, but it led to an impeachment. Thanks to Tom DeLay and the Republicans, it almost worked.
Then in 2000, they took to the streets. They villified our candidate for President, a man who outpolled theirs by 500,000 votes -- they portrayed him as a whiner and sore loser, and it worked.
Now they are back at it like rabid dogs. They are in attack mode now, and will use any story no matter how flimsy or half-baked. Where once they confined their attacks to our leaders, now they have turned on us -- we are all traitors and cowards who hate our sons and daughters in uniform, who hate freedom, and who hate America.
On November 2, I hope for a change that it does not work.
Neil
Sorry, I just lost it totally. God, I am so frustrated. I am looking forward to tomorrow night the way you look forward to the 10th round of a prize fight, when your guy has been on the ropes for the past four rounds. Hoping against hope.
I really don't like Kerry and would rather have a beer with his wife than spend all day with him, but this is the Presidency -- and we are in deep trouble with the jackass in the White House.
How anyone can vote for the man who produced the mess we are currently in escapes me -- I need to understand this, as an American I need to be able to understand why people can think about voting for Bush without vomiting.
What else does he need to do? Destroy the economic health of our federal government -- done. Divide a nation that had been galvanized into a patriotic unity unknown since WWII --done. Quit the war on terror to go off and finish Daddy's Iraq project -- done. Deposit 150,000 of our uniformed brothers and sisters in a shooting gallery without a plan to bring them home in the next decade -- done. Convince the Muslim world that we are Crusaders in a Christian war to destroy their culture -- regrettably, also done. Undermine our prestige and discard our power to lead in the world -- yes, also done.
Can we survive four more years?
Neil
This is the right-wing spin machine in action: devious, manipulative, disingenuous. They prey on people's tendency to remember the spin and not the truth.
The only way to combat this is to, like you, get to the bottom of things and find out the facts.
Yeah, this is how political folklore gets created. Even reporting the fact that the accused attacker is a four-year Army veteran would detract an awful lot from the story. So what has happened so far with this tale is that lots of people have heard only the story of the poor soldier being assaulted by an antiwar fanatic.
Months or years from now, people will remember having "seen in the news" a story about an "antiwar activist and John Kerry supporter" physically assaulting a soldier in a vicious and cowardly way without (so far) anything but speculation on the guy's politics or actual motivations.
It could still turn out that the Freepers' initial assumption was more-or-less correct, as I mentioned in this post. Even loonies can occasionally be right. But the fact that the (apparently admitted) assailant is a veteran messes up the story as an ideological set-piece for the rightwingers.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, persecution fantasies are a major part of the far-right view of the world. The Freepers want us to believe - and presumably a lot of them actually believe it - that we live in a world in which critics of the Iraq War, which according to the polls include a majority of the American people right now, are hostile, violent, sinister people stalking our soldiers to attack them from behind, not unlike the urban guerrillas in Iraq. Only they are holding fast to the true, Patriotically Correct faith.
And they will switch to bashing a President Kerry's foreign policies as soon as he gets elected, if we should be so fortunate as to have that happen. And they will still believe that only the minority of persecuted rightwingers are carriers of the true flame of Real Patriotism, while Kerry's supporters stalk the darkened streets looking for soldiers to spit on or beat up. - Bruce
Marine Veteran JKARLUSMC has more pressing things to do than duel in print with high school sophomores on subjects about which they have neitehr expertise nor credibility. However, inasmuch as someone has emsiled to me the text of your remarks, I will respond.
BMiller224, you have made my case for me Your personal attack on me rather than behaving in an objective manner and admitting that your sources may just be a wee bit biased is the typical liberal response.....OUTSHOUT YOUR OPPONENT. You and your ilk will keep the moron vote alive.
JKARLUSMC
"Marine Veteran JKARLUSMC" is maintaining his usual high standards for comment:
AOL-J jerks: A case study
http://journals.aol.com/bmiller224/OldHickorysWeblog/entries/1948
- Bruce
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