Conservative Commentator Sure Loves Police Violence
When video footage of an Occupy DC protester being tased—and subsequently being sent to the hospital— went viral, CNN’s Erick Erickson was ready with some really classy commentary.
“Watching a hippie protester get tased just makes my day,” Erickson said during his radio show The Erick Erickson Show. “ [The video] is just made of awesome.”
Erickson mentioned, in passing, the protester’s hospitalization due to “a medical condition.” Witnesses on the scene said the protester, called “Lash,” appeared to be having a seizure after having been tased in the back.
Ha! Erickson is right—hospitalization and human suffering are hilarious!
Here’s the video of the arrest. Erickson wouldn’t play it on his show to spare his gentle listeners all the “f-bombs.” One mustn’t curse in front of the children—after all, it distracts them from learning how to hate their neighbor.
The video shows Lash—who had been theatrically tearing down no-camping notices and causing a scene, but not threatening anyone—being surrounded by three police officers. He starts to panic, says “Why are you coming at me?” and “I’ve done nothing wrong!” and then tries to back away from the police. He isn’t lashing out at the officers—he’s arguably resisting arrest, but not violently.
After two of the officers already have him secured by the arms, the third shoots him with her taser gun, eliciting cries of shock and curses from onlookers.
Nearby protesters shout: “He wasn’t being violent!” and “Shame!”
To them, and to many who saw the video and spread it virally, it was a horrific act of unnecessary violence.
To Erickson, it was entertainment.
Erickson is no stranger to making callous, tasteless, or inaccurate remarks. This is the guy who called former Supreme Court Justice David Souter a “goat-fucking child molester,” said feminists are “too ugly to date,” and suggested people might be justified in beating state legislators to a “bloody pulp” over regulations.
But this is about more than outrageous comments. It’s about contributing to a culture of rhetorical violence where schadenfreude is celebrated and where people who disagree with you deserve to suffer.
As Conor Friedersdorf wrote at The Atlantic:
Guys like Erickson demonize their political and ideological opponents with hateful rhetoric. They're cast as malign, even less than human. It's that same mindset—seeing protesters as malign, even less than human—that leads to police so quickly and needlessly using violence against them.
It’s just one more example of how vitriol corrodes compassion and turns suffering into sport.
Emily Crockett is a staff writer with Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @emilycrockett.
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