And the Pleadge Goes On....

[chefdennis]

They did it again...."Those" People keep forcing the Pleadge of alligence on The LWV's.....

Politics

Deja Vu: Audience Once Again Has to Override LWV Moderator to Say the Pledge

Posted on October 28, 2010 at 7:36am
by Jonathon M. Seidl
Deja Vu: Audience Once Again Has to Override LWV Moderator to Say the Pledge | The Blaze

Controversy is once again surrounding the League of Women Voters. After a LWV moderator last week refused to allow a debate audience to say the Pledge of Allegiance, forcing them to break out into a spontaneous, unsanctioned recitation, the same thing happened in a Pittsburgh, PA suburb on Tuesday.

As a debate between Democrat congressional hopeful Dan Connolly and Republican incumbent Rep. Tim Murphy was about to begin, Murphy asked the moderator if they could say the Pledge. The moderator hesitated, and began explaining that starting with the Pledge is not the usual way to begin and that it would take too much time. The crowd ignored her explanation, stood up, and recited their allegiance:

(see the video at the link above)

Arlene Levy, president of the Greater Pittsburgh LWV and former history teacher, spoke about the incident afterwords. She believes the requests are political and an attempt to intentionally disturb the forums.

“There have been some groups who want to create a ruckus, call attention to something and using the pledge to the flag and making it seem the League is unpatriotic if we don’t,” she said.

Both candidates, however, seem surprised by the moderator’s opposition.

“I see it as something completely a-political. It’s something that unites all of Americans,” Connolly said after the debate.

“If the flag is political, then we have some problems here. The flag is what brings us together,” Murphy added.

“The insensitivity [of the moderator], to me, was inexcusable and outrageous,” Tom Hajzus, a former high school prinicpal, registered Democrat, and Murphy supporter, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He said the crowd’s reaction “was an American moment, that’s what that was.”

The moderator was Susan Ruether, listed on the local Washington County LWV website as a committee member in charge of media communications. She declined to comment to the Gazette.

She did however comment to Murphy during the debate that ”next time if you have a request like that, we would appreciate it if you would give it to us when the rules are discussed,” according to the Gazette.

“It didn’t need to be requested. I assumed you would do it,” Murphy replied.

The incident doesn’t sit well with Stephen Gutowski over at Eyeblast.tv, who is left asking a plethora of questions:

Why is it that both times this has happened the League seems to believe that its a result of some kind of conspiracy to attack them? Seriously, who connects a desire to recite the pledge with some sort of grand conspiracy to take them down?

Besides, how long exactly does it take to recite the pledge? A minute? Why do these moderators seem to believe its going to cut into debate time?

Levy told KDKA-TV that the Greater Pittsburgh LWV is considering now incorporating the Pledge into every candidate debate.

 

[Turtle]

This has choreographed written all over it. The LWV should be able to conduct the rules of a debate any way they see fit, and both candidates know the rules going in. "Murphy asked the moderator if they could say the Pledge. The moderator hesitated,..." because she was blind-sided with a request that had not been, and should have been, discussed prior to the beginning of the debate.

 

[witness23]

"No-Pledge" Debate Organizers Cite Death Threats, Criticize Beck
October 28, 2010 1:04 pm ET by Joe Strupp

Link: "No-Pledge" Debate Organizers Cite Death Threats, Criticize Beck | Media Matters for America

The moderator and the organizer of an Illinois congressional debate who were criticized for not allowing the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited said they have received death threats and plan to go to law enforcement authorities to file complaints.

Each also blamed Fox News host Glenn Beck for stirring up opposition to their work by criticizing the incident and attacking them by name on his Fox News program, which they say has sparked an increase in hateful e-mails and phone calls since then.

"Our webmaster has stopped forwarding the e-mails to me because they have become so ugly," said Jan Czarnik, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, which sponsored the Oct. 20 forum in Evanston. "I am getting death threats and I am taking it to our local FBI. There are postings on Fox News' Facebook page that include threats on my life."

The forum included Republican and Tea Party candidate Joe Walsh, Incumbent Democrat Melissa Bean and Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer.

Kathy Tate-Bradish, the moderator for the debate, did not want to be quoted, but confirmed she has also been threatened by phone.

The incident, which has gotten heavy attention on the Internet, involved a member of the audience standing up as the debate was about to begin and asking if the Pledge of Allegiance would be recited.

"I have absolutely nothing for or against saying the Pledge of Allegiance," Tate-Bradish said at the time after denying the request. That caused some in the crowd to boo and others began reciting the pledge themselves.

Tate-Bradish then commented that she had intended "no disrespect for the flag," but that the pledge is not usually said at LWV debates and "has never been requested" at the forums she has moderated.

Since the incident, conservative blogs have taken up the issue, criticizing Czarnik and Tate-Bradish. Beck highlighted it on his show Monday night.

"What good reason is there for not saying it in this setting?" Beck asked. He later said Tate-Bradish "tried to scold" the crowd.

"What a bunch of hogwash. Listen to the arrogance," Beck said about the moderator's actions, later saying of Czarnik: "Jan Czarnik, notice she has czar in her last name, is calling this phony patriotism by supporters of candidate Joe Walsh."

Beck also claimed she worked with "ACORN's Project Vote, which is funded by Tides, and Soros." Czarnik said she worked with Project Vote in the early 1980s, when it was not affiliated with ACORN.

"No one ever tried to contact me," Czarnik said of Beck. "They didn't even have the courtesy to see if that is true. We have never had anything like this happen, ever."

Czarnik cited two websites, Foxnation.com and Fox News' Facebook page, that have drawn angry comments, some threatening such as this at the Facebook page:

Traitors, all! They ought to be publicly hanged for their treasonous disrespect of the country.

But Czarnik said it is the threatening e-mails sent to her at the LWV offices, as well as phone calls, that have sparked the worst fear.

"I realize that all it takes is one angry crackpot with a blog to get a rifle and shoot me," Czarnik said. "These people and these calls are identifying themselves as from all over the country."

Her concerns come amidst a wave of right-wing violence, some of which was reportedly perpetrated by Beck fans caught up in the conspiracy theories he forwards on his programs.

One was Byron Williams, who engaged in a July 18 shootout with California Highway Patrol officers in Oakland. Williams reportedly admitted later he was on his way to kill members of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation in San Francisco and told Media Matters that Beck had "exposed" things that "blew my mind," specifically Beck's conspiracy theory involving Soros, President Obama, and a Brazilian oil company -- a theory that Williams said informed his alleged plot.

The other is Richard Poplawski, who killed three Pittsburgh police officers on April 4, 2009. A friend told Media Matters' Will Bunch that Poplawski "loved Glenn Beck" and was obsessed with the idea that the stockpiling of food was necessary for a coming societal collapse that would render paper money worthless -- a theory often discussed by Beck.

Czarnik sent us several of the e-mails she says she has received at the LWV headquarters since Beck's show. Among them:

Please tell Executive Director Jan Czarnik and Kathy Tate-Bradish that if they prefer (and probably would), people in the crowd of any future debates can sing the Soviet hymn ... If they do not wish to do that, please tell those c*nty douche bags to go f*** themselves

You had better put a leash on your liberal lunatic Tate-Bradish. She will take you down. Her Pledge of Allegiance video is going viral, now that Beck outed her fanaticism. You will follow NPR down the rathole, thanks to her.

But Czarnik said the death threats have come by phone.

"I am taking it over to the FBI," she said. "I am getting a lot of threatening phone calls and sadly a lot of them come from veterans."

Tate-Bradish told us she reported the threatening e-mails to the Evanston police on Wednesday.

 

[Turtle]

Hypocrisy run amok. Do unto others, it's that simple.

 

[LDB]

The LWV women appear to be cursed with the liberal defect. They should seek help from the genetecists as soon as possible. Then again, perhaps they are really just that stupid.