Media Duplicity on Civility
“Video shows aftermath of 69-year-old woman punched at a Trump rally.” So ran the headline at the Los Angeles Times on September 14, 2016. The liberal-left website TPM (Talking Points Memo) headline was more incendiary: “Trump Supporter Cold-Cocks 69-Year-Old Protester Outside Rally.” Suddenly, Shirley Teeter, a heretofore unknown elderly woman, was thrust into the global limelight as a media darling and an heroic symbol standing against Donald Trump and his violent bully minions. That was the story that played for days all across the Fake News media. Unfortunately, the fact that it turned out to be a false story didn’t prevent it from being the model for innumerable similar reports in the anti-Trump media in the months that followed.
“I’ve gotten depressingly familiar with protester beatings at Trump rallies,” Josh Marshall at TPM wrote concerning the incident. “69 year old Shirley Teeter, who wears an oxygen mask and lugs around a tank to support it, was protesting outside a Trump rally in North Carolina when a feral Trump backer turned on her and punched her right in the face. Cold-cocked her, as Shirley put it.”
Marshall was awestruck by Teeter’s heroism because immediately after the alleged beat-down, she popped up on local media to deliver an anti-Trump, pro-Hillary political message. “Now here’s the kicker that makes me absolutely love this woman,” says Marshall, who then enthusiastically reports: “She gets punched hard in the face, knocked down and bruised. She gets driven home by the police. But damn, Shirley pops right back up and she’s on message.… She asks if people find a Trump supporter punching her in the face deplorable. How can you not love that?” (Emphasis in original.)
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