Wow. You're right. The fact that a 20 second video clip exists which does not record anyone using the "n word" proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that no one said it.

I mean, there is just no possible way that a single particular 20 second clip of video from a large rally could fail to include the word if somebody in a large crowd had uttered it during several hours of protests. The fact that it's not on that 20 sec. clip means that no one in a crowd of thousands ever said such a thing during the entire protest Ever.

This is HUGE! Do you understand the implications!??! I have seen a number of 20 sec. clips from Iraq during which no one was killed. That means that no one died during the Iraq war. OMG!! The entire notion that people were dying over there just a media created smear that can now, thankfully, be debunked by the true patriots.

Holy S**T!!! Did you realize that there is FAR more than 20 seconds of video footage featuring O.J. NOT killing his wife!! He really is innocent! We got it wrong for all these years! Well, thank god that is cleared up.

In fact, I just realized that this effects me personally. I know for a fact that there are at least half a dozen 20 sec. clips of me not-masturbating so now I can finally prove to my mother that I have never, ever, ever, touched my dirty parts over the course in my entire life. Well, THAT is a load off, let me tell you.

My mind is reeling. How many other pieces of conventional wisdom can be disproven with the right clips? Is there 20 seconds of Neild Armstrong on earth? Might it be time to rethink that whole moon landing? Only time and prayer will provide the answer. God speed to you!

And that's why I just point, laugh and say, "That's the best you got?" when they inevitably call me racist, fascist, homophobe, mysogynist or whatever else is the insult du jour.

And if they keep it up, I say, "Well since we're going to act like 10 year olds...Oh yeah? Well eat shit sideways."
That is always worth a laugh if you have an audience. Especially if it's full of people who know you're not a hate-ist.

Defending yourself is exactly what they want, not debating the issues but off on trollish tangents.

Once they start that crap you have to attack them, not defend.

Make them look like the obfuscating, trollish children they are.

In this case yawn, ask for proof and then ask them when they stopped beating their spouses.

See? Libarbarian is exactly what I was talking about.
There's no proof of the accusation even though there were many cameras recording the whole thing but that fool writes 6 paragraphs of contentless snark and went off all proud and happy about showing you what for.

How can you not laugh at that?

The time period that is relevant is the time period during which it is asserted that the incident occurred. In the case of Neil Armstrong, there actually is video specifically showing him on the moon, which means that any video showing him while not on the moon is completely irrelevant.

As I said, there are a number of videos highly relevant to the time period in question here, and they are not all 20 seconds long. One of them runs 48 seconds.

http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.com/2010/03/prove-it-john-lewis-unless-kill-bill-is.html

Another is nearly 4 minutes long:

http://www.24thstate.com/2010/03/absolute-proof-cleaver-wasnt-spat-on.html

At no point in any of the videos can any use of the N-word be heard, and because the video was made during the time period in question, I think it is fair to consider the formerly unsubstantiated allegation to have been proven groundless. (As much as it would be if I were accused of running a red light at a certain time, and a traffic camera showed I did not.)

Bear in mind that there is no obligation on the part of anyone to disprove what hasn't been proven, so the videos which do that are above and beyond the call of duty.

Snark?

I meant every word.

If anything, the problem is that I also never wrote it. See, I have MULTIPLE 20 sec. videos of me not writing it, so I therefore could not, actually, have ever written it.

I'm trying to figure it out myself. But believe me that I mean what I say ... and, apparently, what I don't say as well.

"See, I have MULTIPLE 20 sec. videos of me not writing it, so I therefore could not, actually, have ever written it. "

No, it doesn't prove you haven't done something, it means you can't be proven "guilty" of it. Innocent until proven guilty, no?

WOW... and somehow Libarbarian forgets the following:

1) that the reason the existing video is compelling proof of the unlikelyhood of ANYONE shouting racial slurs, or any pattern of such shouting as to be heard by the representatives is because it was recorded at the time of the event, in proximity to the congressmen.

2) There exists plenty of video of stuff blowing up or people getting killed in Iraq, etc. (and plenty of evidence including OJ's behavior that he murdered his wife - but he WAS acquitted so why the non-sequitur?) No such video has surfaced with the racial slurs on it at teh event.

See? You're all defending yourselves and it doesn't matter, that tool will never admit it's wrong.

It's not here to figure out what happened or to see any truth, it's here to get you defending the tea parties instead of talking about what they're really about.

You see, just because there's no proof of the accusation, that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
It up to you to prove it never happened.

You're much better off pointing and laughing. Libarbarian is a typical tool. Almost witty name that it's all proud of but nothing to write that's even close to witty.

It obviously thinks its a wit, too bad it's only half right.
Just a 10 year old's content free insults.

No looking backwards found the audio.
Definitive proof!

http://massbackwards.blogspot.com/2010/03/tea-partier-caught-on-tape-yelling.html

I didn't realize Taggart was a Tea Partier, I thought he was a henchman.

Notice everybody else is yelling "Kill the Bill".
Obviously racists.
I guess Libarbarian has been vindicated.

Or at least made fun of.

libarbarian,

If you have dirty parts you can clean them with lye. It turns them into soap.

Innocent until proven guilty, no?

Well, guy, that depends on whose Ox is gored, no?

I'll bite and drop the snark and just level for a sec because it is possible that I misunderstood your claim.

If your claim is the more limited claim that the videos suggest that "the crowd" was not hurling racial abuse (ie. that racial epithets were not flung in any meaningful amount by any meaningful number of participants), then I would agree with you. The odds that the videos would fail to audibly record a significant amount of racial abuse that was in fact being hurled around the cameramen or that significant elements of the crowd were engaged in a pattern of hurling racial epithets EXCEPT during the time recorded on those videos, is pretty darn small.

If, as it appeared to me, however, you are making the much more sweeping claim that the entire allegation that someone had yelled it at least once "did not happen", then you are writing checks your evidence can't cover.
This isn't a logical or philosophical argument that absense of evidence isn't evidence of absense. There are several physical and technical reasons that most of the ambient audio generated by the crowd surrounding those cameramen wasn't audibly captured on their videos. Given the fact that the camera likely failed to audibly record most of the ambient noise in it's local environment, there is no basis to claim that the lack of an audible recording particular word, during a total of a few minutes of biased audio sampling from a handful of sources inside of a big crowd implies that the word was never said.

Frankly, I find the whole process of nut-picking to be an exercise in rank stupidity. In any group of people of significant size, you are damn near guaranteed to have racists, "conspiracy theorists", and other jackasses and oddballs. This is especially true of OPEN gatherings where anybody can come regardless of motive or association. Even if the allegations that somebody or bodies shouted "n****r" was true, it doesn't tell us jack squat other than what we already know - that any large crowd is going to contain a few racists and other assorted jackasses. However, for the same reason, I find the opposite practice of "nut-denying" to be just as stupid as nut-picking. ALL large enough samples of people will contain nutjobs. That includes the large groups, including political parties or looser ideological associations, that you and I may happen to consider ourselves part of. Frankly, I think you know this. Hell, your boy "Zombie" made his reputation nut-picking leftwing rallies.

This kabuki theatre of internet partisans is asinine. Some people associated with Team A invariably get caught doing something unseemly and the Team B cheerleaders make a big show of being so offended by the incivility or whatever of Team A. Team A's cheerleaders then hit the field denying that anyone on their team of millions could possibly have done this and "debunking" the evidence. If it prove debunkable then they shift tactics and embrace the no-true-sciotsman fallacy and say "No true member of Team A could ever have done such a thing ... they were probably a plant by Team B to make us look bad because everyone knows all the racists/homophobes/etc. are on Team B anyway." Team B, of course, insists that the incident exposed the true face of Team A. Later on the situations are reversed and everyone adopts the exact same position as their opponents did previously without batting a goddamn eyelash.

The odds that the videos would fail to audibly record a significant amount of racial abuse that was in fact being hurled around the cameramen or that significant elements of the crowd were engaged in a pattern of hurling racial epithets EXCEPT during the time recorded on those videos, is pretty darn small.

I disagree. There are tons of vids everywhere.
But I agree with your point about how one person could have yelled it once.

The whole point about what Eric started talking about was that it wasn't just one guy saying it once, it was a pattern.

You could tell that from when Eric linked the story titled
Tea party and racists -- 'isolated incidents' no more

So in other words, you're agreeing with Eric, if it happened it was an isolated idiot.

So why the snark in the first two comments when you agreed with the post?

In short, I think Occams Razor suggests that

1. a handful of people did, in fact, say racist or anti-gay slurs to people at whom they were quite pissed off.

2. The Democrats then used these handful on incidents to justify a staged pity party to score the some political points.

3. The proper was to respond is by noting that the actions of a handful of people doesn't impugn a much larger number of people and claim that the evidence shows it was NOT indicative of the actions of the majority or even a sizeable minority. EVERY large, open, crowd, is going to contain some small sampling of douchebags who would do that kind of thing. ALL political associations of millions of people, regardless of left or right, has it's share of racists and assholes. Even if it did happen it doesn't mean anything significant in the absence of evidence that it was a large and pervasive phenomena .. of which there isn't any.

Instead, the TP partisans in the blogosphere have decided to implicitly accede to the argument that a handful of racists would, in fact, impugn their entire group, to double down on the "no racism at all over here" gambit, and have the fight over the actual existence of racists in their midsts.

Good luck with that.

"This kabuki theatre of internet partisans is asinine."

So you'll agree that the Tea Partiers are racist while admitting that President Obama and leftists everywhere are racist, hateful and homophobic?

Ok, we posted at the same time.

Now I'm wondering WTF.

Either you're saying that everyone is racist and all groups are culpable, or individuals need to be judged on their own merit.

Or you're just an awesome troll by flipping Devil's advocate midstream to get veeshir off guard and garner more attention.

I was giving it the benefit of the doubt for one comment to see if it really was trying to be civil.
In short, I think Occams Razor suggests that
1. a handful of people did, in fact, say racist or anti-gay slurs to people at whom they were quite pissed off.

Prove it.
There's no video of a handful of people doing anything racist.

You don't convict people improperly using Occam's razor.

So we're back to needing you to prove it.

And if we have to disprove nebulous charges,

I say any racist remarks that might have happened were by a lefty agent provocateur.

I figure, a bunch of angry lefties, on their way home from shooting at Cantor's office, decided to shout racist epithets to make tea partiers look bad.

Occam's Razor says that's what happened.

It's really too bad that your political allies feel the need to do that.

It demeans the whole "free the slaves" and "Civil Rights" things we can thank the Republican party for (in spite of everything the Dems could do on both counts).

Sad really.

The proper was to respond is by noting that the actions of a handful of people doesn't impugn a much larger number of people and claim that the evidence shows it was NOT indicative of the actions of the majority or even a sizeable minority.

I did that.

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2010/03/an_elderly_whit.html

But amazingly enough, they kept right on saying that bigots are in the majority.

There is no proof that any of this happened. An unsupported assertion is just that.

individuals need to be judged on their own merit.

Agree. And I am not seeing a single individual to be judged.

Instead, a whole group is being judged on the basis of individuals who cannot be heard, seen, or identified.

Utter, complete nonsense.