Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown Exploits Rape Remark to Crowd Applause
The most jarring moment, however, came during a rally Brown held with a cadre of famous Massachusetts athletes in which one attendee called for Coakley to have a "curling iron" shoved "up her butt."Just what America needs another Republican Senator with no honor and no ideas.
The reference was to an assault case that Coakley's office oversaw, in which she was late to press charges against a man who had raped a toddler (Coakley later won grand jury indictments charging rape and assault and battery). Such nuance, however, fell short of a reasonable justification.
Democratic Party officials were quick to jump on reports of the comment as evidence of "bullying tactics" by Brown himself. Usually, tying a candidate to the angry screams of his or her crowd can be a difficult supposition. But on Sunday night, video emerged that seemed to show the state senator acknowledging the curling iron remark as it transpired. Hotline On Call was the first to post the footage but the Huffington Post obtained it separately as well. Video at link.
Fox Nation Continues Partisan Lie About Martha Coakley Statement
Fox Nation is doing its darndest to push their Republican candidate for MA senate, former Cosmo nude centerfold Scott Brown, to victory. For the third day, they have a lede which claims that his opponent, Martha Coakley, said something that she clearly didn’t. Backing up the headline is an audio segment of Coakley’s comments made during a radio interview. The lede, “Coakley: Catholics Shouldn’t Work in the ER” is straight out of Gateway Pundit (they of the Jennings smears) where Jim Hoft posted the same audio and same lie about what Coakley said. Not surprisingly, smearmeister Andrew Breitbart picked it up on his “Big Government” website. And like the cropped video which purported to show that Coakley said that there is no more terrorism in Afghanistan, this audio provides no context. What makes it worse is the accompanying commentary which is a lie. But what’s truth when you have some smearing to do.Since brown is lacking in the integrity department it only makes sense he should have supporters with a similar mind-set. It is Brown and his supporters position that the religious beliefs of hospital patients not be respected.
The audio is taken from an interview that Coakley had with a Boston talk show host, WBSM’s Ken Pittman. After discussing Scott Brown’s proposed amendment to a Massachusetts law, which would have allowed Catholic hospitals to refuse emergency contraception to rape victims (it lost), Pittman asked her if she would pass a health care bill with a conscience clause which would allow those who oppose abortion (and other things not deemed correct by the religious right) to opt out. (Hmmm, could health care providers have a conscience clause that allows them to refuse treatment to big, fat, hateful rightwing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh?!) The following exchange took place:
PITTMAN: Right, if you are a Catholic, and you believe what the Pope teaches, you know, that any form of birth control is a sin. And you don't want to do that, that –
COAKLEY: No, but we have a separation of church and state here, Ken, let's be clear.
PITTMAN: Yeah, but in the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.
COAKLEY: The law says that people are allowed to have that. And so, then, if you -- you can have religious freedom, you probably shouldn't work in the emergency room
Martha Coakley did not say that Catholics should not work in the ER – but rather, that those who oppose the distribution of emergency contraception might not want to work in an ER where current law dictates that the medication be dispensed. If Fox Nation were “fair and balanced,” as claimed by their “statement of purpose,” they would provide some balance and journalistic integrity for their threads.
