Oh, those horrible, awful, violent liberals. Neil Cavuto dug up brought health care protester William Rice out once again to show viewers how mean and violent liberals are. Evidently, Bill is a little upset about the lack of attention he's received since his original 15 minutes of fame back in September and was happy to re-enact his heavily edited version of events in Thousand Oaks.
You may not recognize his name, but I do. I was present at the September MoveOn vigil for health care reform in Thousand Oaks and saw the incident unfold in real time through my camera lens. That's why it was a bit of a surprise to me to hear Mr. Rice describe his involvement this way:
... I was in the process of leaving when I was accosted by a man, came across the street, screaming at me that I was an effing idiot. And he was waving his arms in a violent way, and he came at me as if to attack me. So a scuffle ensued and my fist ended up in his mouth, and he bit my finger off.
Not so much. Mr. Rice seems to have forgotten a few things, like the fact that he threw the first punch, nailing the guy hard between the eyes, knocking him into the street and oncoming traffic. He also seems to have forgotten the second punch he threw where Rice's "fist ended up in his mouth" [Rice's description]. The coincidental presence of Rice's fist in the other guy's mouth got a reaction: the tip of his finger was bitten off.
Cavuto trotted Mr. Faux Victim Bill Rice out there to try to paint liberals as violent, firebreathing evildoers, but he chose a very bad example. There were no heroes in Thousand Oaks that night. There was Bill Rice, who decided he had the right to punch a man in the face who he disagreed with, and the man who bit his finger off, presumably after the fist found its way into his mouth.
It was an ugly incident all around, but not at all what Cavuto and Rice described. Of course, that won't stop the teabaggers from trotting Rice out whenever they want, now that he's one of them, or so he claims.
There are more photos of the incident here. They tell the story better than Rice did. Rice is the guy in khaki.
It's pretty pathetic to see Faux News pimp a guy who initiated a violent attack on someone else as a victim, but then...it is FOX after all.
