Man gets attacked for selling flags at a Russ Carnahan rally

Pay attention, America. This is a glimpse into the next three years of the Obama administration, at least using the same logic by which the Left accuses health-care reform opponents of “astroturfing”. If its policies get organized opposition, especially at events designed to allow for public debate, purple-shirted thugs will appear to crack heads and scare off the opposition.

Meanwhile the NY Times does its best to torpedo the opposition to Obamacare by using the passive voice about an attack on a black man handing out flags at an event in Missouri.

A volatile mix has resulted. In Mehlville, Mo., St. Louis County police officers arrested six people on Thursday evening, some on assault charges, outside a health care and aging forum organized by Representative Russ Carnahan, a Democrat. Opponents of the proposed changes, organized by the St. Louis Tea Party, apparently clashed with supporters organized by the Service Employees International Union outside a school gym.

Note how the videotaped attack on a small black man by as many as three union thugs is described as a “clash with supporters.” There is no question that this was an unprovoked attack, but the MSM is denying it.

The rest of the story uses the active voice and there is no doubt who are the demonstrators.

There is no question that the demonstrators have been disruptive; but they have been peaceful and they have been a real grass roots movement – local people organizing themselves, not being paid and not being bussed in. The Democrats are not used to this kind of opposition, having been the disruptors and agitators in the past. So they have turned to brown shirt (or in the case of the SEIU blue shirt) tactics favored by the bully boys of past dictatorships.

At Patterico the headline reads:

Angry Mob of Racist Extremists Beats Black Man at Town Hall Meeting.

I guess the Democrats were right after all. At a town meeting held by a Democrat congressman, a rowdy group of organized and angry thugs showed up to make a point about ObamaCare, and then beat up a man. Race was involved, too: the victim was black — attacked by a man yelling racial slurs.

It’s every Democrat talking point you’ve read about in the last day or two, come to life in an ugly fashion.

With one twist. The black victim was a conservative, and the assailants may well have been union thugs:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

“It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said.

Not when you have angry mobs of left-wing extremists around . . .