The guy who made the sign is in a wheelchair, too.

All trespassers will be shot.  All survivors will be shot again.

They hate free speech and they hate democracy.

IOKIYAR, if not, die. This is right-wing philosophy in the day-to-day.

It sounds unfair, but it’s sadly true.

I passed about eight McCain/Palin signs, one of them pink, while I was walking through my neighborhood this morning. I wanted very badly to uproot them, but I thought that’s what the other side would do. I didn’t realize then that I was actually right.

That’s what I was thinking, INTPagan.  He calls her a bitch and a whore.  Not necessary.  She’s clearly deranged, because taking it upon yourself to destroy someone else’s property is just nuts.  But how quickly he fell back to misogynistic language to berate her.

And Bernard Fuererman who not only ripped up a McCain sign but then beat the WOMAN holding it in the face with the stick it was attached to in front of a crowd of New Yorkers (who of course did nothing) is barely worth mentioning I suppose. This woman is far, far worse.

Link please Rob?  I can’t find that name on Google.

Uncivil behavior on both sides. But at least the relative lack of size-based epithets gives me hope for the future. Baby steps, right? It would have been the easiest thing to yell at her (even easier than bitch!) but it hasn’t shown up in the video, or here, yet.

This video is from April, so Palin’s hatemongering isn’t really in effect for this particular incident.

Here is the incident that Rob mentions above: http://gothamist.com/2008/10/18/mccain_supporter_attacked_on_east_s.php

And I think we all agree that NONE of this behavior is cool, Rob.

Heh, yeah, better not try this kind of shit in a concealed-carry state.

You’re right, INTPagan, even as the Republicans are trespassing on our land, destroying our property and threatening our very lives, it is still vitally important that we exercise restraint and avoid any naughty language no matter how enraged we become at their provocations. If only he’d said “pretty please with sugar on it,” I’m sure this whole ugly scene could have been avoided.

And for the record, if that bitch-cunt-whore had come onto my property and done something like that to me, my strong personal commitment to gender rights, pay equality and the right to an abortion would not have deterred me from calling the bitch-cunt-whore a bitch-cunt-whore to her face. No offense.

I passed about eight McCain/Palin signs, one of them pink, while I was walking through my neighborhood this morning. I wanted very badly to uproot them, but I thought that’s what the other side would do. I didn’t realize then that I was actually right.

We’ve got McCain/Palin signs throughout our neighborhood. And we’re a private little neighborhood in the middle of “nowhere” (we’re not, but there’s no reason anyone should be driving through).

My neighbor across the street mentioned to me recently that she’d love to put an Obama sign up but she wasn’t going to bother. Because she knew that it would either be destroyed or she’d be fined by the HOA. Because HOA board members are those with the McCain signs—and last time around, Kerry signs were subject to the destroy or fine treatment.

And we’re in Illinois. (You might say: really no reason to put Obama signs up . . . )

Okay, first of all this wasn’t on “his land.”  It was next to a highway.  Yes, this woman is deranged, as I said above.  She is dead wrong in her actions.

But as feminists try to point out again and again, words have MEANING.  And the fact that this guy immediately fell back on gendered insults says a hell of a lot about how far we still have to go as a society.

And yes, you repeating the insults multiple times in your post is offensive.

I didn’t realize Pauley Shore was an Obama supporter.  Chalk one up for the weasel.

Love the sexist language Mr. Signmaker reverts to. YAY PROGRESS!

I couldn’t make out what that woman was shouting except for “flag?”

I agree that the guy in question should have taped the woman, recorded her license number, and called the police (not 911).

Then she could have explained her actions to them, and the legal system.

But as feminists try to point out again and again, words have MEANING.  And the fact that this guy immediately fell back on gendered insults says a hell of a lot about how far we still have to go as a society.

Sure, but at the same time, this is the real, wide world. People don’t always speak or act in accordance with your beliefs, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to.

Shorter Alan and atheist:

being called bitches, cunts, and whores is just part of life.  All you bitches just shut up and deal with it.

Thanks, Blitzgal.  Rob misspelled his villain’s name. 

And you’re right.  None of this is cool.  Feuerman richly earned his assault charge, just as this woman has richly earned her trespassing and vandalism charges. 

The difference being that McCain and especially Palin are encouraging this sort of thing by portraying Obama as a Scary Black Man, “Palling around with terrorists”, while Obama is doing nothing of the sort.

Oh, and one aside:

in front of a crowd of New Yorkers (who of course did nothing)

Shit happens fast, man. 

All I have to go on is the victim’s own description of what happened, but I’m going to take a guess at how the scenario looked from the outside:

There’s a couple of McCain supporters at a subway station handing out fliers.  As New Yorkers do with everyone who’s handing out fliers, people actively avoid them.  Then - to use the victim’s words - a “rather benign, doughy-looking Jewish guy” (one of the least-threatening people imaginable, in other words) - walks up to them and a shouting match begins.  Oh, great.  Just what I needed to see on the way to work.  People avoid them even more.  The shouting match intensifies, with the utterly nonscary man tearing up signs.  People circle even further around. 

Then the attack happens.  If I recall correctly, 51st and Lex is a fairly high-end neighborhood, mostly commercial.  People there aren’t used to violence.  They freeze up, with no idea how to react.  How long does it take?  Not long at all, I’m guessing.  Like I said, shit happens fast.  By the time most of them have even figured out what’s going on, let alone tried to figure out what they should do, he’s already gone.

And this battle of the brains is yet another reason why I’m voting for Cynthia McKinney.

But as feminists try to point out again and again, words have MEANING.  And the fact that this guy immediately fell back on gendered insults says a hell of a lot about how far we still have to go as a society.

While I didn’t like it much either, cut him a bit of slack. He was using it in the heat of the moment, when we all reach for the worst language we have in our toolkit.  I would suggest it’s those who deliberately actively use those comments as a weapon who are a far greater problem.

If I bang my thumb with a hammer, I suspect female genitilia are going to be mentioned…

And as regards what to do while in a wheelchair - describing her and her car into a mobile phone and conspiciously using the words “...and bring your gun…” do spring to mind.

And this battle of the brains is yet another reason why I’m voting for Cynthia McKinney.

The whackjob who thinks the Department of Defense dumped 5,000 bodies into the Louisiana swamp during Hurricane Katrina?  Yeah.  You go ahead and vote your conscience.

You know, I am extremely generous with my use of profanity. I’ve been in trouble for carelessly tossed “fucks,” “assholes,” etc. But I have to agree that identity attacks are, generally speaking, unproductive to your case. Make your point as loudly and pointedly as you want, with as colorful language as you want, but calling someone a whore or bitch doesn’t reinforce any cogent argument you’d like to make because clearly her vagina or fatness is not actually relevant to what she did, as irritating as it was.

Fuck is a very customizable word.  Asshole is also good.  As several others have pointed out, it wasn’t the profanity that was at issue, it was the use of gendered slurs.  And Ms. Kate, critiquing his use of an identity attack has ZERO to do with his being in a wheelchair!  I’m glad he got the police involved.  Her behavior was violent and wrong.  I read his notes on the series of videos and the cops had to go into her apartment to retrieve the sign.  She’d kept it!

The woman’s actions are despicable, but I just saw a new clip this past weekend about a man who left bags of dog shit in the back of a truck with McCain bumper stickers.  This kind of thing happens on both sides.

Let me get this straight: Ms Kate is saying it’s okay for this guy to call the woman a whore because the guy is in a wheelchair, and Babs is only saying it’s wrong for the guy to call her a whore because she hates cripples? I had no idea that being in a wheelchair gave a man a pass on being a sexist asshat!

That the guy is a sexist asshat in no way justifies the behaviour of the woman. That video makes ‘their’ side look like crazy racists, but it doesn’t make ‘our’ side look very good, either.

What I’ve learned from this thread:

It’s OK to shoot people. As long as they are tearing up your sign.

It’s OK to call black people niggers. As long as they are tearing up your sign.

And for the record, if that bitch-cunt-whore had come onto my property and done something like that to me, my strong personal commitment to gender rights, pay equality and the right to an abortion would not have deterred me from calling the bitch-cunt-whore a bitch-cunt-whore to her face. No offense.

Because ripping up a sign is nothing compared to the crime of having a vagina. Where do they dig these people up?

For the record, I don’t blame the guy who yells out sexist bullshit in the heat of anger nearly as much as I blame someone who defends that behavior with a cool head because they don’t even realize what the problem is.

I would tend to agree with some of the other commentors above. “Fuckhead” or “Dipshit” would have been way better than resorting to “whore”.

If I bang my thumb with a hammer, I suspect female genitilia are going to be mentioned…

Interesting. I almost always reach for the religious blasphemy.

I wonder if that’s because I come from a religious background. Someone from a feminist background, perhaps, would be more likely to reach for anti-woman profanity simply because the purpose of profanity is to be shocking and inappropriate, and perhaps a feminist would perceive words like “bitch” or “cunt” as more shocking than “Jesus Tittyfucking Christ.” For instance.

Weird, if true.

oh jesus on a pogo stick.

rank, horrific provocation does tend to bring out the worst in people.

i think we can have a smidgen of sympathy for the guy - who seems awfully young as well - even if we can’t excuse his language.

oneiros and those of like mind, you’re either saints, or you’ve never been seriously provoked by violence against your person or property. i have been, and i’ve been shocked and appalled by what came out of my mouth in retrospect. we do not overcome our cultural programming so easily; when we are mad, we say things we do not mean, or want to mean.

“The whackjob who thinks the Department of Defense dumped 5,000 bodies into the Louisiana swamp during Hurricane Katrina?  Yeah.  You go ahead and vote your conscience.
Seraph “

Yeah, cus it’s not like the DOD has dumped a 1.5 million bodies in the Iraqi desert.

i think we can have a smidgen of sympathy for the guy - who seems awfully young as well - even if we can’t excuse his language.

Exactly so. 

oneiros and those of like mind, you’re either saints, or you’ve never been seriously provoked by violence against your person or property. i have been, and i’ve been shocked and appalled by what came out of my mouth in retrospect. we do not overcome our cultural programming so easily; when we are mad, we say things we do not mean, or want to mean.

I have.  I did.  Still ashamed of it, thirty years later.  But the fact is most of us have that provocation point.  And let us not forget the fact that those people who can remain calm in the face of wild provocation are often labeled as freaks: look at Michael Dukakis on the disgusting rape question.

Am I the only one who can’t make out a single word that this woman says?

Am I the only one who started darkly chuckling when he called her “ma’am” in one of the later videos?

Just one final though:
This one has my backstory warning meter going.

Maybe some feminists here need to examine the privilege that comes with being physically able to fight or flee if needed?

Yes, that’s it. Shout “ABLEIST!” and all the pesky feminists who don’t like ‘whore’ as an insult will slink away, abashed. If this woman had been Asian would it have been cool for him to call her a slant-eyed gook?

The fact that we are culturally programmed to say these things - that we reach for sexist or racist insults unthinkingly - is the point. It’s why conservatives are being less and less subtle about their racist attacks on Obama. 

Nobody is blaming the victim for the woman’s ripping up the sign. But pointing out that the first thing he reached for is sexist language does not “other the victim”. It points out how very close to the surface that ugliness is.

First off: where I live, it’s illegal to remove or destroy campaign signs, even when they are on street medians and shoulders.  But:

OK, the PROPERTY the guy was referring to had to have been the SIGN, since it seems unlikely he owns that highway shoulder.  So, no trespassing.

As to gendered insults: puhhhLEEZE.  Nice hobby-horse.  And pearl-clutching. This guy is a citizen, not a trained cop.

For the record, I don’t blame the guy who yells out sexist bullshit in the heat of anger nearly as much as I blame someone who defends that behavior with a cool head because they don’t even realize what the problem is.

Though his use of gendered terms is quite unfortunate, I do feel some slack should be given because:

1. The vandalizer was the aggressor in this instance by taking it upon herself to destroy a sign which happens to be his personal property and in the process….also violated his first amendment rights revealing herself to be a fascist ass. 

2. She took advantage of the fact he was disabled and unable to protect said personal property. 

3. If the area the sign was placed WAS his personal property, she also committed the act of trespassing on someone else’s property and thus, had no business being there. 

IMHO, someone who provokes a confrontation by violating someone else’s rights and/or committing an injurious action has few grounds to complain when they are subjected to the understandably justified anger of the victimized party, however tactlessly it may be expressed.  WTH did she expect by pulling that BS?!!

And this is why I sometimes think “issue” blogs shouldn’t cover non-issue subjects.  Invariably, the issue wonks come out and try to shift what it’s about.

I’ve often resorted to saying “bitch”, or at least thinking it, when in extreme anger.  It’s interesting because I would never and have never resorted to saying racial epithets no matter how angry I am.  Just goes to show how much further we all have to go.

Nobody is blaming the victim for the woman’s ripping up the sign. But pointing out that the first thing he reached for is sexist language does not “other the victim”. It points out how very close to the surface that ugliness is.

And yet from some people it was coming across as, “Oh, sure it was bad for her to take advantage of his disability to destroy his property, whatever, but OMG he called her sexist names!”

Though I think it may be more a symptom of election outrage fatigue than anything else that people elide right over the politically-motivated action and go straight to the insults the victim was flinging.

I mean, it’s interesting to note that, unless you are a regular feminist blog reader, it’s really hard when being deliberately provoked by a woman to curse her out without using “cunt/bitch/whore”.  I can’t say I’m 100% innocent, and I’m sure no one here is.  But because it take a combination of hard work and luck to get to the point where even want to reject that social training, I have to claim sympathy based on context.  Context does matter.  It’s true that one wouldn’t likely yell racial slurs in the heat of the moment there, but all that tells me is that society has a long way to go on reimagining sexism, not that this particular guy is especially bad.
Amanda Marcotte

So is this actually Amanda or is it somebody pretending to be / lampooning Amanda?

I can’t tell.

I understand a guy in a wheelchair, seeing his property and labor destroyed and unable to take direct action, falling back on the common insults of our patriarchal society. He’s acting from the gut, not the head, and those insults are so ‘normal’ in our culture, it takes active thought and habit building not to revert to them.

Alan, otoh, is a sexist pig, because in the calm of discourse in an environment friendly to Obama supporters, he can’t see anything wrong with the words used to describe her. I will spell it out.

Bitch(colloquial)= woman with strong opinions. A fairly accurate description in this case, but the problem isn’t really her opinions, but the actions she’s taking. She is a vandal. A hooligan. Many women have strong opinions without losing control of civilized behavior. And it’s not a negative thing for a man to have strong opinions, therefore it is a sexist term.

Whore=person who has sex for money. Horribly inaccurate. She’s getting nothing out of this but a vent for her hate. She’s not acting in a sexy or seductive way. So he’s not using the word in a way that has any meaning other than “woman I hate.” This is the speech of pure misogyny.

Cunt= female sex organ. Pretty much every woman has one of these. When you reduce one woman to her sex organ, and call it a bad thing, you do this to EVERY woman. Also, unlike dick, cunt is such a strong and rarely used term in our culture that it suggests violence may follow.

Though I think it may be more a symptom of election outrage fatigue than anything else that people elide right over the politically-motivated action and go straight to the insults the victim was flinging.

I’ve seen a similar eliding with some progressives, Japanophiles, and a handful of Japanese students who happen to be Japanese equivalent of our wingnuts when they attempt to portray the atomic bombings of Japan in WWII as proof Japan was an innocent victim of the war when any cursory examination of Japan’s aggressive colonialist policies during the 30’s and 40’s, especially a 1937 invasion of China many in the imperial government thought would be over within 3 months shows otherwise. 

Shorter them: Lets forget the inconvenient fact that Japan was an aggressive colonialist power whose rampages screwed millions of Asians who were conquered, brutalized, enslaved, experimented on*, and killed in the most cruel manner possible and whose record of brutalization is comparable to its Axis allies. 

* I.e. Unit 731

Though I think it may be more a symptom of election outrage fatigue than anything else that people elide right over the politically-motivated action and go straight to the insults the victim was flinging.

There’s also something about the fact that we can hear him much more clearly and loudly than her.  From what people on this thread are saying they’re hearing she’s giving just as good as she’s getting with the disgusting insults, but like some others I can’t hear a damn word she’s saying other than “flag.”

I feel far worse for him, but I can’t bring myself to really like either person in this situation.

I can’t bash the guy for immediately going for gendered curses.

Who’s bashing? No one is saying that this guy in an evil, misogynist, would-be rapist, serial killing litterbug. They’re mostly just saying that he shouldn’t have used that language. It’s constructive criticism, not attacks.

He needs to learn better vocab and why it matters.  She needs a fine or a night in jail.

Agreed.  As for her, however, I believe she needs to spend a night or more in jail, take/retake a Constitutional civics course, and doing some community service such as cleaning up the highways in light of her violating his property and constitutional rights and the incidental littering in the process of stealing the victim’s sign. 

He should have been more tactful, but she should have NEVER acted the way she did in that video in the first place.

Look, I’m sorry, the guy should not have called her the B word or the W word. I try not to use those words myself, preferring ‘asshole’ and ‘moron’. It’s just that trying to pick apart the incorrect language of two people who are fighting seems like a pretty fruitless pursuit to me.

If someone enters your proberty and messes with your stuff, you can bring at leas two crminal carges agaisnt them. We need to get as many of these wingnuts into jail ad we can

“So is this actually Amanda or is it somebody pretending to be / lampooning Amanda?

I can’t tell.”

wtf - it doesn’t matter - plenty of laughs either way.

... it’s really hard when being deliberately provoked by a woman to curse her out without using “cunt/bitch/whore”. 

I’m just surprised he left out “fat.”