By now everybody has heard about the protest the Tea Party fringe-wingers staged in front of the SEIU headquarters yesterday on behalf of one Kenneth Gladney, who claims to have been attacked by “union thugs” at a constituent meeting held by Russ Carnahan. Of course, these claims don’t necessarily hold up under the light of YouTube:
(The man of the ground at the beginning of the video is an SEIU member and Gladney is the guy being pulled down at the :06 mark — a quick tumble that is not likely to have inflicted much damage and, indeed, he was back on his feet in a couple of seconds, showing no signs of injury in this video.)
However, the real cherry on the Tea-party ice-cream sunday, given the howls from folks like Gladney that the Obama administration efforts to fix our broken health care delivery system represents something akin to the coming of the beast, is this passage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s write-up of the SEIU protest:
… Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance.
The irony is palpable and demands no further comment.
Of course there are other ironic fixings on this particular ice-cream sunday. Mr. Gladney is apparently planning on lawyering up in order to try to collect damages from the SEIU. If you have been to any of these Tea Party mob actions, you will remember that a number of these folks like to blame the problems of our health-care delivery system on out-of-control lawyers and their malpractice suits. Enough said.
MediaMatters.com sums up Mr. Gladney’s probably scam very neatly:
The only real mystery from the incident is why Tea Party member Gladney, who’s seen up-close after the brief encounter walking around and talking to people and who appears to be injury-free, then decided to go to the hospital to treat injuries to his “knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face.” All that from a two-second fall to the pavement?
Also unclear is why he contacted a newspaper reporter, or why his attorney wrote up lavish accounts and sent them to conservative bloggers, or why Gladney and his attorney appeared on Fox News.
FYI, according to his attorney, Gladney plans on filing a civil lawsuit against the union.
Go figure … Gladney better hope his lawyer is really, really good.
has a–not blow by blow–but an eight point analysis of that video. Its careful dissection of what happened indicates that, at the very least, Gladney “was a willing participant who shares some of the responsibility,” and that it’s likely McCowan’s story about being attacked first is true.