A sign of things to come?
Last July, I joined reporter Matt Tomsic and photographer Traci White in Ballou Park for the first Danville Tea Party rally.
At one point during the rally, I stood next to Matt at the back of the crowd. An older white man wearing a baseball cap shouted the words, “kill the immigrants!” when one of the speakers mentioned this country’s problem with illegal aliens.
Hours later, Matt wanted to know if his story about the rally should include the man’s comment.
Why print something like that? Because it happened. We both heard the man say it.
But the reason to leave it out was even more compelling, and tipped the scales: When that man shouted, “kill the immigrants,” no one else within earshot gave him any verbal encouragement. He was truly a lone nutcase in a crowd of 400 in Ballou Park that day — and our reporters haven’t heard anything like that at subsequent tea party events.
I’m reminded of that outburst as I recall Wednesday’s stunning revelations. After Tea Party members in Danville and Lynchburg publicized the home address of Tom Perriello’s brother on the Internet, a propane gas line on a grill that was kept on a screened-in porch at Bo Perriello’s house was found cut. The FBI and the Albemarle County fire marshal’s office are investigating.
Danville Tea Party members may not always agree with the newspaper’s Opinion page, but on our news pages, we’ve been fair and balanced in our treatment of this local branch of the national tea party movement.
But if someone from the tea party is found to be responsible for this incident in Albemarle County, I’ll finally regret the three words we didn’t print last summer.
Posted by Robert Benson at 10:09 PM. Filed under: benson_main •
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