According to the Post-Dispatch, despite the fact that it only took a jury 40 minutes to reach a Not Guilty verdict in the misdemeanor trial of two SEIU employees, the right wing's favorite alleged victim has decided to file a civil suit against the two employees as well as the President of SEIU:
Kenneth Gladney filed the suit against Service Employees International Union members Elston McCowan of St. Louis and Perry Molens of De Soto , as well as SEIU president Mary Kay Henry and local president Tom Balanoff...
He said McCowan and Molens attacked him without provocation after the meeting. The suit alleges the union "ordered, encouraged, and arranged McCowan and Molens to appear...to harass, abuse and beat those individuals who held political views."
Gladney's attorney Matthew Hearn sounds like a piece of work:
He "absolutely" believes that union officials brought in McCowan and Molens to beat Gladney, he said. "That tends to be the way that they operate," he said.
Of course, the fact that Gladney is trying to get money out of the deal and that this is being used as an opportunity to attack SEIU doesn't come as much as a surprise to anyone who remembers when Gladney's spokesperson/employer/lawyer/self-proclaimed witness David Brown allegedly told an employee that this would be his "gravy train." The only shocking thing is that they didn't include President Obama and the ACLU in their suit.
My guess is that they're hoping that SEIU decides it's not worth the lawyers' fees and settles out of court. Of course, this would be a huge mistake for SEIU, since any settlement would be used by the right-wing as evidence for their "union thug" conspiracy theories, even if Gladney personally signed a non-disparagement clause. In my opinion, as long as they need to hire lawyers anyway, they should consider counter-suing. I know Elston has been looking into filing suit to cover the medical bills for his shoulder surgery, which he says was caused by Gladney attacking him.
When I first saw this news item, I was annoyed, but now I'm starting to think that it's a good thing. Even the people who somehow still trust the claims of Breitbart and the local tea party have to have their limits. They might be able to be duped into thinking that one trial was the result of a government conspiracy, but could even they still claim that it was "fixed" if two separate juries reach the same conclusion? I'm sure some of them can, but others will eventually start jumping off the crazy train.
It's been really funny watching the "editorial board" over at 24state.com spin out reasons why McCowan and Molens are unquestionably guilty and twelve jurors were somehow duped by the mind control powers of defense attorney Paul D'Agrosa. It took the jury about 50 minutes to reach a "not guilty verdict," but it only took five minutes for 24th State to convince themselves that if they were prosecutors, half of the city of St. Louis would be in jail right now due to the totally awesome cross-examination questions they came up with.
One admission during 24th State's I-could-totally-be-a-real-lawyer-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it routine caught my eye: So basically, after spending two years posting photos of Gladney in a wheelchair (Gateway Pundit is still doing so) and after attacking anyone who questioned the wheelchair as unconscionable, the St. Louis tea party is now admitting that it was a political prop and blaming it on David Brown, Gladney's mysterious boss/spokesperson/lawyer who allegedly called Gladney his "gravy train." The fact that it was a prop surprises absolutely no one, but it is interesting to see them finally admit it.
Just goes to show once again that the tea party is so convinced that they're right about, well, something, that they're willing to lie about anything. They probably don't even think there was anything wrong with having Gladney come out faking an injury so bad that he needed a wheelchair. After all, in Tea Party World, the ends justify the means in their war against the evil hippies, and that's exactly why no one should take what they say at face value.
A St. Louis Tea Party blog has another conspiracy theory about the trial. They write the following:
Setting aside all of the peripheral evidence, the case came down to two witnesses for the prosecution stating they saw McCowan and Molens attack Gladney, versus a witness for the defense who made the claim that Kenneth started the "fight" by slapping the hand of Elston McCowan.
It was up to the jury to determine which witness testimony was most reliable
First of all, that's not technically true. It was up to the jury to determine if there was evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the two defendants assaulted Gladney. Even if one witness was "more credible" than another, that wouldn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt (BTW, as I've previously noted, the prosecution's witness John Mirelli does not seem very credible).
Anyway, they identify the witness as the woman with the cane in this video, seen in the screen shot below.
Their speculation that this is the witness is correct. Hilariously, Gladney had previously claimed that this woman had also assaulted him (Gladney's huge number of inconsistent statements and changing stories about the case are another major consideration in the jury's verdict, of course).
Anyway, the tea party speculation about the witness is just plain dumb:
The full video: You can see her just a few seconds in, clearly getting to the scene after it occurred.
As we verify the identity of this witness that stepped forward two years after the fact, it seems fair to question if she perjured herself, seeing as she arrived after the assault occurred.
Actually, as anyone familiar with the case knows, the initial incident did not take place at the curb, but rather by the button board nearer to the camera, right where the woman is walking in the screen shot. The video was shown while the witness was testifying, and the lawyers asked her questions about it. There's nothing in her statement that would indicate that she was lying. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif What this does show is that another biased assumption of the tea party turned out to be false. They claimed that there "were no other witnesses." How did they know that? Obviously, they didn't know that. They just assumed it based on limited information, and it then became a piece of Tea Party Gospel. The reason McCowan and Molens were originally arrested was because the police were approached by the tea party and only ended up interviewing three people, all of whom were tea party activists. This is the same night that the police ridiculously arrested Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, and also arrested Brian Matthews for "resisting arrest," a claim later disproved by video of the event.
Update: Like moths drawn to the Burning Flame of Teh Stupid, Jim Hoft and Dana Loesch are now promoting this idiotic conspiracy.
Remember when I wrote all of the reasons why the tea party conspiracy theories about "two union thugs assaulting a black man in parking lot" at Carnahan's town hall were probably false? Well, after two years, a jury of twelve peers finally has reached a conclusion confirming what I've been saying. Elston McCowan and Perry Molens have been found NOT GUILTY of misdemeanor assault.
The conspiracy pushed relentlessly for the past two years by Dana Loesch, Jim Hoft, Andrew Breitbart, Fox News, and the tea party has been shown at long last to be a complete fraud. Two innocent men have been harassed and threatened for two years as a result of a tea party smear campaign with only one objective: to make unions look evil.
Of course, even though they didn't actually watch the trial, they're already declaring that there was some grand conspiracy involved: What pathetic people.
Beat Me In St. Louis http://t.co/ntJtvLC from @firedoglake Slightly used wheelchair and neck brace for sale. #tcot #burnbabyburn
If I'm missing something, let me know. And don't worry local media (with the notable exception of the RFT), I won't be holding my breath for you to acknowledge that I've been covering this story responsibly and got pretty much everything right from the beginning, while you were busy covering tea party protests at the NAACP and SEIU offices. That would be waaay too much to ask.
The trial for Elston McCowan and Perry Molens, former SEIU members accused of attacking Kenneth Gladney in a parking lot, kicked off today. They are only charged with a misdemeanor, so the trial won't be a big to-do, and the prosecution has already rested their case after about four hours. I haven't seen anything that has changed my previous skepticism about the tea party story claiming that "union thugs" McCowan and Molens started mercilessly beating Gladney.
The entirety of the prosecutions case against Molens and McCowan is the testimony of Gladney, Sandra Himes, and John Mirelli (previously known as "towel man"). Apparently, the prosecution was not comfortable with having Harris Himes as a witness, which supports some of my previous speculation.
Gladney's testimony was the most damaging to the prosecution's case. For starters, Gladney appeared in a neck brace, which brought back memories of him showing up at a tea party rally in a wheel chair despite the fact that he was running around with no obvious discomfort immediately after the altercation took place. The defense lawyer said that Gladney's neck brace, which he was wearing because of surgery for a herniated disc, had nothing to do with the altercation, and Gladney did not challenge him on that point, so I assume it's true. But this opened up a criticism from the defense lawyer who asked Gladney why he showed up at the tea party rally in a wheelchair. Gladney said, basically, that it was hot and he was on medication and "they didn't have folding chairs or lawn chairs." Ouch.
The defense lawyer also pointed out that Gladney had repeatedly claimed in the past that he was "handing out flags for free." But this seemingly is in contradiction with his claim that he went to the rally to "make money" by selling buttons and flags. The defense lawyer suggested that Gladney said this because he thought it would make him appear more sympathetic, just as showing up in a wheelchair would make him appear more sympathetic.
A more important problem for Gladney was that his previous descriptions of what happened did not match his current testimony. He previously had claimed that Elston McCowan, a black minister, had called him the n-word. In today's testimony, he now claimed that Perry Molens, a white man, also called him the n-word, which would be a strange detail to leave out of all of his previous interviews. More importantly, he had previously claimed that 4 different people "attacked" him, yet now he clams only two. He also claimed that he "never said a word" to McCowan, which I'm pretty sure is at odds with his previous interviews. And finally, his story of the altercation provided no explanation of why Elston McCowan was seen lying on the ground at the beginning of the video And all of this was despite the fact that he told the defense attorney that his memory today was as good or better as immediately after the incident happened.
The second witness was Sandra Himes, wife of Harris Himes. Though the initial police report implied that she had seen Gladney attacked, she admitted (as I had noted previously) that she did not see how the fight started. She claimed that she saw all three of them "tussling," but of course the real question is who instigated the fight so it's strange that she's so confident that it was McCowan's fault. She, like Gladney, quite strangely could not account for why Elston McCowan was seen on the ground at the beginning of the video. She apparently seemed to suggest that she saw them tussling, then somehow did not see 30 seconds of the altercation including the moment when McCowan was on the ground, then returned immediately after the video started and tried to break them up. Finally, she claimed that she only heard one thing: Elston McCowan saying clearly "you son of an n-word" to Gladney. Neither of the other two witnesses for the prosecution heard this precise phrase, and McCowan and Gladney claim that McCowan did not use the n-word, though he did call Gladney an "Uncle Tom" because Gladney was selling buttons of Obama in white face.
Which reminds me of another point. Both Himes and Gladney claim that there were no buttons of Obama in white face, and the prosecution seems to be making a big deal about that point. All I can say at this point is good luck with that one.
Finally, the last witness, "towel man" John Mirelli, who was seen in the video screaming "you're going to jail!" at McCowan, Molens, and others in the initial video (while holding a white towel), claimed that he saw the beginning of the fight. He said that he wasn't at the event for political reasons, but "just wanted to know how health care reform would effect his company" which conflicts with a lot of video of him at the rally earlier arguing the tea party line. In fact, I'm pretty surprised that the defense attorney didn't bring up the fact that Mirelli can be seen in a previous video having to be held back from an altercation with another guy in an SEIU shirt (6:44 mark). Mirelli's story wasn't quite coherent, in my opinion. He claimed that Molens and McCowan were "standing over Gladney" punching and kicking him, and that Molens then "lost his blalance and fell backwards." However, the original video shows Molens losing his balance and falling backwards only after pulling Gladney backwards when Gladney was standing over McCowan. Is Mirelli saying that Molens lost his balance twice and fell over both times? Cause that would be pretty improbable.
Also not mentioned was David Brown, the employer of Gladney who tried for many months to serve as his spokesperson, who allegedly referred to Gladney as "his gravy train."
One last thing I just remembered. Gladney claimed that though the tea party paid for him to travel with them on speaking tours, he never "asked anyone for money or assistance." Actually, Gladney explicitly used Andrew Breitbart's websites to ask people to contribute to the "Kenneth Gladney Trust Fund" via Bank of America.
So. as is obvious, I have a lot of concerns about the case that the prosecution presented. I can't claim to know what the jury thought about what happened or what the defense will look like, but right now I don't see any conclusive evidence supporting the prosecution's case, and certainly not the Grand Tea Party Conspiracy that Obama ordered "union thugs" to beat up random people at town halls.
Bill O'Reilly had Zaki Baruti of the Universal African Peoples Organization on to speak about his comments at a press conference earlier in the year. I'll give O'Reilly a little credit: unlike every other right-wing news source that has covered this incident, he actually gave time to someone pointing out that there's another side of the story. If you only watched the other Fox News programs, or read Big Government and the St. Louis Tea Party sites, you would think that everyone was in agreement that this was a brutal beating started by Elston McCowan. There is no such agreement.
O'Reilly also said that the way the system works is to let stuff play out in the courts, which is also at odds with the tea party lynch mob that has been clamoring for felony "hate crime" charges against McCowan and Molens with literally no argument to support the suggestion.
Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft and right-wing radio host Dana Loesch are both upset that the NAACP didn't believe their conspiracy theories regarding the altercation between Elston McCowan and Kenneth Gladney, and are now accusing the NAACP of being "racist" and claiming that NAACP representatives said that Kenneth Gladney "wasn't black enough." Both Hoft and Loesch suggest that the NAACP literally used that expression. Here's Hoft's headline:
And here's Loesch's tweet suggesting that the NAACP used the expression "on tape":
As you can see in the headline, Hoft claims the NAACP is "racist." He goes on to say:
Has the NAACP has become a radical racist, leftist group of thugs that promotes public beatings? It looks like it.
However, Hoft and Loesch's claim that the NAACP literally said Gladney "wasn't black enough" is false. The text Hoft uses, which is not from the NAACP but rather from Zaki Baruti of the Universal African People's Organization, does not include those words. Here's what it actually says:
Back in the day, we used to call someone like that, and I want to remind you, uh, when this incident occurred, I was really struck by a front page picture of this guy, which we called, a Negro, i mean that we call him a Negro in the fact that he works for not for our people but against our people. In the old days, we call him an Uncle Tom. I just gotta say that. Here it is, the day after a young brother, a young man, I didn’t mean to call him a brother, but on the front page of the Post Dispatch, ironically, he’s sitting in a wheelchair, being kissed on the forehead, by a European. Now just imagine that as a poster child picture, not working for our people.
In fact, their claim is not even figuratively true. The NAACP issued a press release documenting problems with the Gladney/Tea Party story. Their stance on the issue has nothing to do with anybody "being black enough," as Loesch and Hoft claimed. It has to do with the fact that the tea party and Kenneth Gladney's claims are not supported by the available evidence.
By the way, Hoft also claimed that I was "cited as their legal expert." I have no idea where he got that from.
Just another day in the right-wing's reverse-psychology political circus where the NAACP, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, Health Care For America Now, the President, and anyone else who doesn't support their radical agenda are all "racist."
Kelly Owens of the Campaign for Liberty, who was present (though arriving after the fight ended) at the aftermath of the McCowan/Gladney altercation, is in the middle of a signature gathering controversy involving the Show Me Better Courts petition, a right-wing supported ballot initiative to get rid of the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan. Here's the relevant passage from today's post by Tony Messenger on the Post-Dispatch Political Fix blog:
Johnson and Perkins said they were recruited to the petition drive by another Republican, Kelly Owens, who said petitioners would earn $5 per signature. But when they turned in their petitions, Owens said she wasn’t sure where the money was coming from. Owens, Johnson told a group of St. Louis Republicans in an e-mail, was working with Cooper, who is a longtime friend and political ally of Harris.
“And if you happen to run in to James, Chris Cain, Nathan Cooper, or anyone else who helped Kelly, please asked them to pay the petitioners,” Johnson wrote in his plea to St. Louis Republicans.
I spoke to one of the petitioners last week, and she was very angry at Owens in particular. However, in the article, a message on Owen's voicemail implies that she also was not getting paid:
Owens couldn’t be reached for comment. But on her cell phone voice mail, she’s left a long message for petitioners calling her to be paid.
“He has to pay us,” she says of Harris. “He just keeps giving us the runaround. … If the checks are not sent out today, we’re taking action.”
Obviously, it's hard to know at this point what's going on, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.
I was asked by some friends to write up a summary of the problems with the Tea Party/Kenneth Gladney story that "union thugs" were sent to a Russ Carnahan townhall meeting on August 6 to beat up dissenters. I think what I came up with is a pretty good overview of the situation that highlights some blatant falsehoods spread by Kenneth Gladney and the St. Louis Tea Party as well as a number of other problems with their story. Hopefully, it will be a useful resource for anyone interested in the case....
“Destroying the Left” by Destroying a Good Man
Members of the national tea party shamed the nation earlier this year by screaming racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and spitting on Representative Emmanuel Cleaver. But the behavior of the tea party in the days that followed was almost as disgraceful. The St. Louis Tea Party, both one of the most successful and the most unethical tea party groups in the country, led a national campaign by right-wing extremists to deny that the events had ever happened. They called members of the CBC “frauds” and “hustlers.” They called civil rights hero John Lewis a “liar” because Lewis reported that he had heard racial slurs being shouted. And the St. Louis Tea Party also pulled out a trick they have been relying on for the past eight months: they used a story built on a foundation of lies in an attempt to distract from the racism present in parts of their movement.
This particular right-wing myth revolved around a fight that took place on August 6, 2009 outside of Congressman Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting on aging. The fight began between two men: Kenneth Gladney, a man selling “Don’t Tread on Me “ flags and buttons with faked photos of President Obama smoking marijuana, and Elston McCowan, a Reverend and an employee of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The St. Louis Tea Party immediately alleged that McCowan and fellow SEIU member Perry Molens had assaulted Gladney. They embraced Gladney as a hero and claimed that because Gladney was a black man, the fight was a hate crime committed by “the Left” (they usually left out the fact that Reverand McCowan was also a black man). They used these allegations to get countless appearances in the local St. Louis media, as well as national right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News and the Big Government website. They claimed that President Obama had sent “storm troopers” to beat up anyone opposed to healthcare reform. They claimed that this demonstrated that organized labor is evil. And most of all, they used this incident to distract from and deflect any discussions of racism on the political Right: whenever racist behavior was observed on the Right, including the D.C. incidents, the St. Louis tea party would respond, “it’s the Democrats who beat up black men in parking lots.”
Though I wasn’t present on August 6th and can’t claim to know exactly what happened, I have many good friends who have testified to the moral character of Reverend McCowan. And there are a huge number of lies, inconsistencies, and distortions that prove that Kenneth Gladney has not been honest in his description of events. Since the trial is coming up soon and the tea party will be sure to use the opportunity to try to build upon their stated mission of “destroying the Left,” I have assembled a number of these falsehoods below. I think they show quite clearly just how cynically the tea party was willing to use Kenneth Gladney to push their right-wing agenda.
The video:
The tea party originally claimed that Gladney was assaulted by four union members and that the assault was caught on video. However, the video does not support their story. At the beginning of the video, both Gladney and McCowan are laying on the ground. Gladney gets up, and is being restrained from attacking McCowan, when Perry Molens comes up and pulls Gladney backwards onto the ground yelling “get off him!” (0:03 in the video) Another man is standing protectively over Rev. McCowan as McCowan is laying on the ground. Later in the video, Kenneth Gladney can be heard saying, “I’m gonna beat the s**t outta him. That’s what I’m gonna do” (1:10) So the video suggests that Gladney was an active participant in the fight, and possibly the instigator. Furthermore, it is important to note that the video was shot and edited by a right-wing activist so we have no idea if the beginning of the fight was intentionally cut out of the video.
The police report: Misdemeanor charges were filed against McCowan and Molens based upon the police report. However, the report was highly flawed. Despite the fact that there were at least four people present who supported Rev. McCowan, the police report relied only on the testimony of three tea party activists. The report states clearly that these witnesses approached the police officer with their version of events (p. 6). None of the witnesses in the police report are credible.
Two of the witnesses are Harris Himes and his wife Sandra. Harris Himes is a right-wing activist from Montana who believes the United States should be a theocracy. He leaked information to the right-wing media in an attempt to bias public opinion. The original police report stated that Himes and his wife saw McCowan and Molens attack Gladney. However, in a separate interview, Himes admitted that he was a distance away when the fight started, and that his wife didn’t see the fight start. The police report also quoted Himes as saying that Gladney was pulled over a table despite the fact that there was no table at the site. Finally, in one story, Himes said that McCowan punched Gladney and Gladney fell to the ground, but in the video Himes claimed that Molens rather than McCowan knocked Gladney to the ground originally.
The other tea party activist, John, who spoke to the police, is seen in a video (6:44 mark) earlier in the day having to be held back from starting a fight with a different SEIU employee. At the beginning of the original video, John was leaning over McCowan in a concerned way, which would be strange if McCowan had just been assaulting Gladney. John also only started yelling, “You attacked him!” when Molens pulled Gladney backwards. But if Gladney was being beaten for a long time before that, why wasn’t John yelling earlier? John also accused the guy with a ponytail of attacking Gladney (0:46 in the original video), but that man was never charged with anything.
Also of note, six total people were arrested that night. The charges against two were dropped, one after a video showed that the police report was inaccurate.
The lies: Kenneth Gladney has said a number of things that have been proven false. He claimed that McCowan laid down on the ground to pretend he was hurt.
However, an x-ray that night showed that McCowan had a dislocated shoulder from his fall, and later CT and MRI scans showed multiple fractures.
Gladney also claimed that after he went looking for his glasses, the police had to protect him because McCowan and Molens “went after him again.”
However, the video clearly shows that no one was going after Gladney. In fact, Gladney was speaking to McCowan afterwards (0:38 in the original video).
Gladney also repeatedly claimed that he was giving the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags away. However, in the original video, he said he was selling the flags (1:25). Also, he claimed that all of the buttons said “Don’t Tread On Me,” but the video showed that the board had buttons with fake pictures of President Obama smoking pot. Finally, he claimed that all of the merchandise was his. But in fact, his employer David Brown is seen on video selling the same merchandise earlier in the night and was quoted as saying that Gladney was selling his merchandise.
The inconsistencies: In the video, Gladney says to McCowan, “Why’d you hit my hand?” (0:41). This would be a pretty strange thing to say to someone who had just been punching and kicking you while you were on the ground.
Gladney claimed that McCowan and Molens attacked him and knocked him to the ground while he was trying to hand out buttons. However, the video clearly shows that the button board is far away from where McCowan and Gladney are on the ground.
Gladney and Brown claimed that four people attacked Gladney. However, charges were only ever filed against two, and the witnesses never mentioned anyone else.
The employer/lawyer/witness/spokesperson: David Brown hired people to sell swag at political events, and Gladney was one of his employees. Brown lied to a right-wing blogger, claiming that there were no buttons of Obama smoking pot, which was proved wrong by the video and photos. He then claimed that he didn’t know what was on Gladney’s board, even though video shows him using the same board earlier in the day. He was quoted by a former employee as saying that the incident with Gladney would be his “gravy train.” He claimed to be a witness but the video showed that he was far away when the fight started. He also originally claimed he was going to be Gladney’s lawyer, but then said his brother would be. Shortly after the incident, he stated his intention to arrange a “Liberty Tour” where he and Kenneth Gladney would travel around the country and be paid to speak about “liberty” and “free speech.”
The Absurd Behavior: As soon as the incident occurred, the St. Louis Tea Party started raising money for Gladney and have been doing so into 2010. Immediately after the incident, Gladney and Brown suggested that President Obama had something to do with the attack. The St. Louis Tea Party claimed that Obama had sent a “signal” for people to attack tea party members. The tea party also literally blamed, at various times, the President of SEIU, the Field Director of Health Care for America Now, David Axelrod, and many other public figures for the fight.
Even though Gladney was seen walking around the night of the event, at one of the early tea party events he showed up in a wheelchair. At that same event, St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy claimed that Gladney needed help with his medical bills. After the irony of them asking for help with medical bills while opposing healthcare reform was pointed out, they then claimed that Gladney was covered by his wife’s insurance and accused the “liberal media” of making things up.
Gladney and Brown also held a protest and press conference outside of the NAACP offices claiming that the NAACP wouldn’t help them because they were conservative. However, they had never even filed a complaint with the NAACP. When asked about the extent of Gladney’s injuries at the event, Brown replied, “It wouldn’t be prudent for us to discuss his injuries at this time.”
Gladney and the tea party repeatedly accused Rev. McCowan of calling Gladney “the n-word.” However, what they don’t explain is that the word used was “negro.” They continually say, “n-word” to imply that the much worse n-word was used.
Gladney toured the country with the Tea Party Express, selling flags to make money.
The tea party pressured the St. Louis County Counselor to file the charges as a “hate crime,” even storming her office with video cameras at one point. They falsely accused her of not looking at Gladney’s medical records, then refused to apologize when they were proven wrong. They also falsely claimed that Gladney’s brother was fired from the animal control department for political reasons, then had to admit they were wrong.
Conclusion: The above information is a good case study in how the tea party is willing to cynically use people in their quest to restore right-wing Republicans to power. The tea party does not care about either Gladney or McCowan: they simply are using them as pawns in their game of political theater. If we are going to combat the growing right-wing extremism, we must be prepared to stand up for our friends and allies, because even these small battles can take on a large significance when exploited by the tea party and a mainstream media that is often all too happy to peddle their conspiracy theories.
On August 6, there was an altercation outside of Russ Carnahan's town hall that involved Kenneth Gladney, Reverend Elston McCowan, and Perry Molens. The St. Louis Tea Party originally claimed that the video of the event showed a "brutal beating" of Gladney at the hands of "SEIU thugs" McCowan and Molens. However, the video is clearly inconclusive, and only shows Molens pulling Gladney backwards. Even Molens' pull is impossible to interpret without knowing the context, given that it looks as though Molens and another man might have been preventing Gladney from attacking McCowan as McCowan was lying on the ground.
Since the original incident, the St. Louis Tea Party and their patron Andrew Breitbart have been shamelessly trying to exploit the fight for political gain. The Tea Party has literally blamed everyone from President Obama to Congressman Russ Carnahan to HCAN National Field Director Margarida Jorge for the incident. They suggested there was a conspiracy among local prosecutors, and falsely accused County Counselor Patricia Reddington of not looking at the medical reports (BTW, they still haven't apologized for blatantly lying about Reddington). They even accused the local animal control department of firing Gladney's brother as political payback, and eventually (amazingly) took back their ridiculous assertion.
The tea party conspiracy theories about "thugs" being ordered by Obama or SEIU to beat up random vendors outside of health care events are clearly false. But I've also raised a number of questions about the claims that Gladney, his attorney, and the tea party have made about the particular events that took place that evening. And a great many people found the claim that Gladney was assaulted especially suspicious given the fact that Gladney did not look injured in the original video and then showed up in a wheelchair several days later at a Tea Party press event.
But I think I've just come across even more damning evidence for the official tea party/Gladney story of what happened that evening. Gladney has claimed, on multiple occasions, that Elston McCowan laid down on the ground and grabbed his arm, pretending to be injured. You can see Gladney making this claim in the following clip from Fox News:
Transcript:
Gladney:
And even Mr. McCowan, he laid himself on the ground after he kicked me, after the other people were jumping on me and kicking me and stuff, he laid himself on the ground like he was hurt.
Fox News lady:
Ahhh, so you're going back to the videotape and saying your attacker suddenly was on the ground next to you after he had attacked you.
Gladney:
Yeah, he was crying to the police officer, "oh, my arm's broke." Yeah, if his arm is broke it's from hitting me in my face.
Reverend McCowan has provided me with his medical reports from that night and a follow-up appointment three weeks later, including X-Rays, MRI, and CT Scans, that clearly show Gladney's claims to be false.
First, here is a scanned copy of McCowan's medical report from that night, August 6:
Findings: Transverse sections are obtained through the left shoulder without contrast from which multiplanar re-formulations are obtained. A small Hill-Sachs impaction fracture is present. A large osseous Bankart fracture is observed. the fracture fragment measures up to 3 cm in maximal dimension and is slightly comminuted. It is displaced slightly anteroinferiorly.
In other words, Rev. McCowan clearly suffered a pretty serious injury the night of the altercation. All of this is incredibly damning for Gladney's bizarre clam that McCowan laid down to fake an injury, which probably explains why Gladney's spokesperson/lawyer David Brown had this look on his face while Gladney was talking: So, to sum up, we can see that Elston McCowan is laying helplessly on his back at the beginning of the video. His medical reports clearly indicate that he was badly injured. In fact, we can even see from a still frame from the video that it appears as though Gladney is still trying to attack McCowan at the beginning of the video: Yet Gladney seriously wants to claim that McCowan was faking an injury? This raises a number of questions. First, why would Gladney feel a need to make such a bizarre and clearly false claim that McCowan had "laid himself down" to fake an injury? Is Gladney afraid to explain the real reason McCowan was on the ground? If Gladney is willing to blatantly misrepresent something this serious, what else could he be misrepresenting about the evening? And finally, and most interesting for me, what are Breitbart and the Tea Party going to do if they can't flog this issue every time a discussion about political violence or racism comes up?
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