When I saw this story the other day, I almost posted about it and said that I'd be $100 that it would turn out to be a bunch of nonsense. The claim is that the head of the College Republicans at Oakland University was beaten up by his political enemies:
Justin Zatkoff, the executive director of the Michigan College Republicans, was brutally beaten after leaving a party in Ann Arbor on Saturday night. The Oakland University junior from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. was rumored to be targeted by militant leftist groups. Zatkoff, pictured above, did not know his attacker, and no money was stolen...
A report from the Michigan College Republicans earlier this week said:
Justin Zatkoff, Executive Director for the MFCRs, was attacked leaving a party in Ann Arbor Saturday night. Justin had not seen the attacker before, and had no opportunity to defend himself. Justin is well-known for being a conservative and 'in-your-face' Republican, and there is quite a bit of speculation that he was targeted by leftist groups.
And sure enough, it looks like that was all a big steaming pile of crapola:
Ann Arbor police said Friday there's no truth to the rumors.
While at a party that began last Saturday night, police said Zatkoff picked a fight with some of his friends, and got punched in the eye. Police interviewed Zatkoff at a hospital the next day and he didn't recall what happened.
People who were at the party told police Zatkoff had too much to drink, said Ann Arbor police Lt. Mike Logghe.
"We interviewed the guy who punched him,'' said Logghe. "He admitted to punching him. He said he was a friend of his from high school.''
So almost everything in the initial report was wrong. He wasn't beaten "after leaving a party", he was beaten at the party. And not by someone he didn't know or by roving gangs of "militant leftists" or a "homosexual rights group" but by a friend with whom he had picked the fight while being drunk. The truth is that he's not an "in your face conservative", he's an in your face drunken asshole. And I wish I'd found someone to bet with me on it.
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Hm. Justin Zatkoff. Obviously another yellow elephant.
'And I wish I'd found someone to bet with me on it.'
I read about this last week and I think it would have been pretty hard to find a taker. The claim was just absurd. If a group of people had 'brutally beaten' him I really think he would have had worse than that one black eye. Although it was a beauty of a shiner.
If a group of people had 'brutally beaten' him I really think he would have had worse than that one black eye.
MAN! You should have seen the other guy(s)!
;)
Maybe Republican Rep Foley could send him an email and cheer him up!
No correction yet on the site which claimes to be the "Truth Caucus."
Oh the beauty of law enforcement. Unlike politics its slightly harder to just make stuff up without people calling bullshit on you.
Just finished reading the whole news article about this, and one thing puzzles me: if it HAD been a politically motivated attack, everyone (left and right) would be screaming for a prosecution, and rightly so.
But since it turns out to be a "friend" of the guy, and at a party, and the guy was drunk, no charges will be filed? The attacker gets off?
I think this is absurd. Frankly, lots of people act like "assholes", as Ed called the guy above, and he may very well be one. But that still gives no one the right to brutally bash the guy. He's going in for surgery for Christ's sake!
Anyone who cares about preventing violence in our society should be calling for the person who did this to be charged.
'Anyone who cares about preventing violence in our society should be calling for the person who did this to be charged.'
I completely agree. I have found that these kinds of situations are treated with a disturbing amount of inconsistancy. I have a friend who went to jail on assault charges despite the fact that the person he was accused of assaulting testified that they were just messing around and were friends. But the courts didnt care and he got sent up for it.
Skip: I think it depends on the jurisdiction. Cops and prosecutors have a lot of leeway there. The cops in my area don't tend to write up reports unless one party wishes to, or unless EMTs need to be called.
Drunken fights between buddies they tend to just ticket for distubing the peace and make sure they go home seperately.
Admittedly, this comes from listening to cops complain abotu their job and the two parties I've been at that resulted in a police presence. (Quite some time back). The second actually involved an incident, which was well over by the time the cops showed up. (We seperated them quickly). They left contact information with both parties, let them know how long they had to file charges, and ticketed them both and asked us to make sure they got home safely.
And to turn down the damn music, 'cause they didn't want to be back when the neighbors complained.
This reminds me of every time a school shooting occurs, the fundies claim the perpetrater(s)were atheist and out to kill christians. The claims always prove to be false and in fact the perpetraters are usually their own fellow christians that just snapped.
Skip Evans writes:
But since it turns out to be a "friend" of the guy, and at a party, and the guy was drunk, no charges will be filed? The attacker gets off?
You're assuming that Justin Zatkoff wasn't the attacker.
Self defense doesn't usually result in a charge.
As to the PUNCHER facing criminal charges: I think the PUNCHEE has to press charges- and I think that, having had his lie exposed, he's probably just going to shut up about the whole thing and pretend it never happened.(One wonders why he lied in the first place, but by lying, he was actively choosing to let his assailant off the hook...)
Somehow I don't think this guy had it all planned out when he decided on the "political" story. From the article, it appears Zatkoff was the instigator of the fight. I'm guessing he was embarrassed -- except he's a republican, so that isn't possible.
This reminds me of the incident from Lexington, MA earlier this year where the wingnut press reported that the 7-year-old son of an antigay activist was beaten up by a large group of his fellow first-graders, while school authorities stood by, because of his father's stance. A few days later, the school district reported that it was just a playground fight between the kid and his best friend, and they quickly patched things up.
I also seem to recall that there's the concept of "fighting words" in legal precedent - basically, if you do something to intentionally and/or blatantly provoke a fight and get beaten, it's your own [darned] fault. More or less. Or so I vaguely remember the concept being described.
Not only has the story not been corrected on TruthCaucus, comments are closed so no one else can correct it.
Odd thing is, I'd acutally buy a BAMN member(nominally a pro-affirmative action student group, they're actually Trotskyite millitants, which I actually found more charmingly anachronistic than anything) attacking someone. Some of their members had taken to shoving and making threats during protests back when I was at U of Michigan ('99-'03) - a particularly charming fellow at one of their protests informed me that he wanted to kick my head in because I was opposed to using race as a factor in admissions.
To be fair, he posted a correction in a separate post on the 30th.