Cry Me a River

I wasn’t there as a protestor. I was driving down the street, where I saw a group from Moveon.org and a group from Code Pink protesting on the corner in my home town then, which was Thousand Oaks California. My son had just been commissioned into the Marine Corps, and I was concerned that folks there may have been uh, uh, protesting against him and his bravery, and I stopped to question that. My questions were answered satisfactorily and 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 me came at me as if to attack me, and so a scuffle ensued and my fist ended up in his mouth and he bit my finger off. Bill Rice, Boo-hooing to Neil Cavuto About What Happened While Rice Was in the Process of Assaulting Someone

Mr. Rice went into a bit more detail last September when he was asked about it:

Neil Cavuto: …but reports are from witnesses that you threw a punch at him. What happened, really Bill?

Bill Rice: Yes sir, yes sir I did. He came at me calling me an idiot and whenever he got close within my range, I threw a punch.

Neil Cavuto: Okay, you threw a punch. Did the punch land?

Bill Rice: Yes.

Neil Cavuto: So then, what happened next?

Bill Rice: Then, I threw a second punch and my fist ended up in his mouth.

Interesting how the story has evolved. Nothing in that first version about the guy “waving his arms in a violent way” and coming at Rice “as if to attack me.” Just the guy calling him an idiot, and Rice punching him in the face a couple of times.

And now the tea party tale is that nobody paid any attention to the incident, that only Fox News covered it at the time. Except that going back and looking at the coverage brings up accounts in The Washington Post, , the Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, the Atlantic, CNN...


This pretty much sums up the attitude driving the tea party movement -- a man presented by Fox News as very hard done by because he lost part of his finger while punching someone repeatedly in the face.