Tuesday, September 18, 2007

"Bro" shouting student justifiably tasered at Kerry event

The righties are breathless with fauxtrage (that would be fake outrage) today at news that a student who was asking too many questions was tasered at a campus forum with John Kerry at the University of Florida. Here's how the AP described it:

A University of Florida student was Tasered and arrested after trying angrily and repeatedly to ask U.S. Senator John Kerry about the 2004 election and other subjects during a campus forum.

...

Videos of Monday's incident posted on several Web sites show officers pulling Andrew Meyer, 21, away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.
It's hard to say whether the kid was one of those "heh, I love the Swift Boat Vets, and I'm going to sabotage the nascent political career of John Kerry. OMG! Heh indeedy" types, or if he was a conspiracy-touting indymedia type.

However, in a true example of a news organization burying the lede, we read this later in the piece:
As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's "very important question," Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, "Don't Tase me, bro," just before he is shocked by the Taser.
Did you get that? The officers, who most likely were going to lead the guy out of the room peacefully, were forced to send 10,000 righteous volts of electricity surging through his body after he dropped the "Bro" bomb on them. Apparently the student went on to ask them if they had seen the "sick Lacoste polos at Nordstrom," and mentioned his deep and abiding love for Jack Johnson's early work. Suspecting they had mere seconds before the guy popped his collar and tried to slip some GHB in their beer, the campus security officers made a wise decision to deploy the taser.