Congressman Bob Ethridge, a North Carolina 7 term Democrat incumbent is in the news because of a widely shown video showing a scrap he had with two 'college kids' on a DC street who essentially ambushed him with videocameras outside a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser:
Now, I don't know anything about Congressman Ethridge, and if I did I probably wouldn't like it.And I wouldn't be surprised to find that, politically speaking, our views are 180 degrees apart.
I realize that a lot of you won't agree with me, but I think he was entirely within his rights, if perhaps a bit too forceful about it.
Ethridge is walking down the street minding his own business when out pops someone with a video camera, asking him 'do you agree with the Obama agenda?'
Before he went off, he asked the cameraman several times "Who are you? Who are you with?" and received no answer. For all he knew,they were working for his Republican opponent in a tough election campaign, filming footage that could later be digitally altered and used against him. So he slapped the camera away from his face and grabbed the camera man, continuing to ask who he was and whom he was with.
The polite and normal way to approach a public figure you want to interview is to say hello, introduce yourself and politely ask if your target minds answering a few questions.What happened to Ethridge was basically an assault, and he was given no choice in the matter.
One of the things I've always found pleasant about the South when I've visited is a sense of basic etiquette and decorum - a sort of informal formality, if you will - that percolates through Southern society.
What an old school Southerner like Ethridge saw here was his dignity being assaulted. And he reacted. The NRO's Jim Geraghty underlines this unwittingly as he writes on the reactions of many of Ethridge's fellow Southerners in his home town paper, a lot of whom thoroughly understood his actions.
As this point, Ethridge has apologized and doubtless, he could have handled it better.But so could the two ill-mannered video muggers who impinged on his privacy and assaulted him.
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11 comments:
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Being from the "south" I can understand this. I do not believe Mr. Ethridge should have apologized. Those who impolitely invaded his space should be the ones to apologize. Perhaps a few good knocks to the noggins of rude people and they will get the message.
Sorry have to disagree with you on this one. As a public figure he should be used to people coming up and talking to him all the time. He did not have to stop and he did not have to respond to them. He chose to confront them and he chose to loose his temper. There is no law against what the kids did, but what Etheridge did is commit assault and battery. You choose a public life, you live with the limelight you asked for.
You talk about his honor/dignity being assaulted. What if his honor was assaulted to the point that he took out a gun and killed the two boys? Or maybe if his daughter talks to a male he doesn't like and his honor is assaulted he could kill her? Honor is never an excuse. It is a cover for aggression and last refuge of cowards.
BTW here's what Honor gets society:
http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php
I also grew up in the south. Honor was also an excuse to hang many a young black man who looked at a white woman and it was the reason they lynched Leo Franks.
this is a short posting by ff, lemme see just how many times i disagree with hisself.
#1 minding his own business when out pops someone with a video camera,
did you watch the video? the guy is standing on a corner, he not only greets the congressman once, but twice.
#2 For all he knew,they were working for his Republican opponent in a tough election campaign,
.....or he coulda been a hussein plant checking up on the congressman.....
but far more importantly, what does it matter? is he an elected official? was he in a public place? he had a question posed to him? what does it matter who he was/with?
#3 So he slapped the camera away from his face and grabbed the camera man,
no he did not. he grabbed the kids arm that held the camera and twisted it backward.
#4 continuing to ask who he was and whom he was with.
see #2 above.
#5 The polite and normal way to approach a public figure you want to interview is to say hello,
see #1 above.
#6 What happened to Ethridge was basically an assault,
what happened was his bullying tactics were caught on video. if he can't take the heat, then take off the pantyhose and get out of the kitchen. if he did nothing wrong, then why issue an apology? i didn't know that he had issued an apology. i thought it was one of those non-apology apologies.
#7 One of the things I've always found pleasant about the South when I've visited is a sense of basic etiquette and decorum - a sort of informal formality, if you will - that percolates through Southern society.
read my comment to this item using jason robards voice in "once upon a time in the west".
what the kid should have done is grow a pair and knock the congressman on his arse. he's an old man. you wanna mix it up, fine. then, after you knock him on his arse, you help the man up, and knock him on his arse again. that enough etiquette for 'ya?
#8 But so could the two ill-mannered video muggers who impinged on his privacy and assaulted him.
see all the above.
i think that just about does it. ff after all invited all of us to disagree with him. i like invitations.
Hi Louie!
Not a problem, disagreement, it is.
#1 - I don't call 'hi congressman, how are you ' as someone is walking by asking permission to interview someone.
#2. Given the state of our politics and the basically hostile nature of the question, I think Ethridge had every right to get an answer to his question. Hell Louie, even Stuttering John on the old Howard Stern show used to give people that much.
#3. yes, he got the camera out of his face.
BTW, if you didn't, click to the link to Gerahrty's and see what some of Ethridge's fellow Southerners are saying about this. Kinda bears out what I had to say about the culture.
As for mixing it up, Ethridge is 69 years old and a grandpa. He's also an Army vet, and some of those old guys are a lot tougher and stronger than they look.There's a story about my father (z"l) that comes to mind at this point, but I digress.
Said rude punk got off very lucky.And hopefully learned some manners.
Sorry, that's just how I see it.
Regards,
rob
Hi IP,
I expected to get some flak for this one.
I hear what you're saying, but I think the bit about Islam based honor killings and Jim Crow lynchings is a bit of a stretch compared to what occurred here.
All they had to do was identify themselves, ask if they could ask a few questions and go from there.
Technically, you're correct that it probably was assault and battery, which is why he apologized. And walking away would have been better.But being a public figure shouldn't mean you surrender your rights and humanity.
BTW, being a Southerner (Memphis? Charleston? Maybe Atlanta?)I think you'd agree that what I called the culture of'informal formality' respect for etiquette and for a person's dignity is hardly raced based, but crosses color lines. Certainly that's been my experience.
Regards,
Rob
Hi Rob,
Grew up in Augusta, Georgia-where even the Jews were members of the White Citizens Council. Have a really good story about how they treated Jewish-African-American soldiers stationed at the army base nearby (not particularly flattering to the community- its why my family lived there less than one year); Memphis, Tenn- moved there one month after Martin Luther King, Jr was killed; Norfolk, Va, during the closing days of the Vietnam War. (Yes I have just dated and aged myself).
The form of etiquette practiced in the south is still an excuse for private uncivil behavior and thought. They may smile at you to your face, but its what they do behind your back when you are not there that is important. Just because someone says, "yes ma'am" or "no sir", does not mean they are entitled to act anyway they want in public. You know that "courtly form" is just a mask for the real world.
Sorry, but when you choose to be a public figure you do give up certain rights -just look at the level of scrutiny needed for "libel" cases for those in public life as opposed to us private civilians.
I do not think that there is a leap at all in comparing Jim Crow and honor killings. Both are a means to seperate, disparage and keep "down" and obedient an entire part of the population through intimidation and threat of death.
Hi IP,
I mentioned the three cities I did because that's where the three largest communities of Jews in the South are, especially if we're talking Orthodox. I see I got one of the three right!
You're right - public civility is frequently a mask for private incivility in behavior and thought. But I'd hardly limit that kind of behavior to the South. It's pretty much universal.
My point was that in Southern society, certain modes of conduct are expected, and that was what Ethridge felt was breached.
I certainly see a parallel between Jim Crow and honor killings, although to my mind the dhimmi status meted out to 'infidels' in the Muslim world under sharia is a closer parallel, except that a dhimmi existence is infinitely worse.
However, I would also point out that Jim Crow (which was largely caused by the abuses of the Reconstruction)is largely dead today, and things have changed a great deal since the 1960's.
Also what Rep. Ethridge did is not comparable to either Jim Crow or honor killings.Like I said, I expected to get flak from Joshua's Army on this one.
I respect where you're going here, but I still feel it's a bit of a stretch.
Regards,
Rob
Rob:
I don't know about the law nowadays, nor about the law in N.C., but traditional common law says that ones response has to be proportionate to the situation, even a threatening situation.
Etheridge's mouthiness was politically stupid, but not illegal or disproportionate, considering that the young man approached him verbally, and not in a physically threatening way.
Snatching the camera, however, and grabbing the young man in a choke hold -- well, that's garden-variety assault. In a pre-PC world, when the law still meant something, there would be no defense to that physical response to a manifestly non-threatening situation.
(BTW, as part of my obsession with martial arts, I spend a lot of time working on self-defense, and there's just no way to elevate those dweeby young men into threats sufficient to justify the paranoid rant and choke hold.)
Oh, you're totally correct Books. It was assault, but I merely tried to give it some cultural context.
The self defense angle reminds of something really funny on th ematter I'll post forthwith.
You're a good guy and I like your blog--you're welcome to visit mine, michigansilverback.com, which takes a Catholic take on the same subjects you're interested in. You will find we agree on almost everything.
But not on the Congressman, however. Nobody has a right to slap around anybody else, and the Right Honorable Member from the Great State of North Carolina has well earned himself a one-way ticket back to the obscurity of private life for brutally attacking these boys.
He's not merely a jerk, he's a public menace, and his activities here reveal he is not to be trusted with power. Guys like him, when they *get* power, don't continue to act like that; they hire goons to do it for him.
He's gotta go. And he had absolutely NO excuse whatsoever to criminally assault what were clearly political opponents.
Oh, and by the bye, I have never bought the idea of "Southern Courtly Manners." They're bullspit and anyone who has ever lived there sees the brass knuckles under their fair velvet glove.
Heh! It appears the tribe has spoken..ah, well..
-Rob-
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