Second, last summer Sarah Palin didn't like the fact that award-winning author Joe McGinniss moved in next door to her in Wasilla, Alaska while working on a book about her. So how did Palin respond? She smeared the author as a would-be sexual predator who was trying to sneak peaks at her young daughters while peering through Palin's windows.
And how did the Beltway press corps respond to Palin's shameful attacks on the press? Time magazine toasted the Palin smear for being shrewd.
With Breitbart and Palin, those weren't instances where Tea Party leaders had a legitimate beef with press coverage. Instead, those were instances of high-priced demagogues whipping up a press-hating frenzy on a frighteningly personal level.
What's the not-very-surprising conclusion of all that? Tony Hopfinger sitting in a school hallway, surrounded by right-wing security forces, with his hands cuffed behind his back.
That's the logical conclusion.
Because pretty soon, placing journalists under "arrest" didn't seem so far fetched.
By the way, the Miller campaign's explanation for handcuffing Hopfinger makes no sense. He was flagged for "assault," when at best there was a split-second pushing between Hopfinger and some of the security guards who were crowding him the school hallway.
I mean gimme a break. Can you imagine if every bodyguard or bar bouncer who punched the clock for a living whipped out the handcuffs for a citizen's arrest each time he saw someone get pushed, and then called the cops to come clean up every small-potatoes, fourth-degree assault mess?
Also, note that Hopfinger wasn't "arrested" just for shoving somebody. He was "arrested" for trespassing at the private Miller event, which of course, was open to the public. (i.e. Names were not checked at the door of the school and reporters did not have to show credentials.) But if Hopfinger was guilty of trespassing while strolling the school hallways, than why weren't all reporters in attendance arrested that night? Why was only Hopfinger handcuffed?
Answer: Because he was the only one, at that moment, aggressively questioning the candidate, which to me signals the truth of the whole encounter: Hopfinger was "arrested" for practicing journalism. Hopfinger was "arrested" for trying to get answers to questions from a novice candidate that were clearly relevant to his qualifications; questions about disciplinary action that was taken against Miller while he worked as a part-time attorney at the Fairbanks North Star Borough and reportedly used government computers for partisan political purposes.
To me, detaining Hopfinger was a political statement. Just like Miller's announcement a week earlier that he would no longer answer questions from Alaska reporters was also a political statement: "We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues -- I'm not going to answer."
The Tea Party candidate's ongoing vow of silence is part of the movement's message to the media: Drop dead.
The Alaska "arrest" sent an even more disturbing message from the Tea Party to the press: We're coming for you.
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