Wingnuts lie. Surprise. This edition being the assault in French Quarter over Quitter buttons

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http://gawker.com/5518928/the-tale-of-sarah-palin-the-beaten+up-bobby-jindal-aide-and-pat-dollard

The Tale of Sarah Palin, the Beaten-Up Bobby Jindal Aide and Pat Dollard

One of Bobby Jindal's aides, and her boyfriend, got beaten up last Friday. There was a rumor that the attack occurred because the pair were wearing Sarah Palin pins. It seemed to have been confirmed by the police. Except not.

Come with us on a journey into the strange world of conservative bloggers, misquoted police spokesmen and right-wing victim mentality. Last Friday at around 10.45pm, just after Sarah Palin spoke at a GOP conference in New Orleans, Allee Bautsch, the chief fundraiser for Republican Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, was assaulted along with her boyfriend. Five men attacked them in the street after shouting abuse at them. She suffered a broken leg.

Conservative bloggers, including some guy on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, ran with a rumor that the pair were beaten up because they were wearing Sarah Palin pins. Pat Dollard, who is a) conservative b) fascinating and c) all sorts of crazy posted on his blog that the NOPD had confirmed this to him. Yahoo News then ran the story using Dollard's reporting. To fully appreciate how ridiculous that is, please read this wonderful Vanity Fair article about Dollard and his myriad antics.

Now, to nobody's surprise except Yahoo News, the Police spokesman, Bob Young, tells Politico's Ben Smith that "the quote was the opposite of what he'd said and "completely incorrect." Though he does admit that the NOPD is looking into the political motivation angle. We wish we could say 'the end,' here, but it's probably got another five blog cycles to run.


Send an email to Ravi Somaiya, the author of this post, at ravi@gawker.com.





http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/dollard200703

Rogue Agent
Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood

In 2004, having made his name as Steven Soderbergh’s agent, Pat Dollard was the stereotypical Hollywood operator: coked-up, Armani-sheathed, separated from his fourth wife, and rapidly self-destructing. But when he hit bottom, Dollard didn’t go back to rehab; he went to Iraq, embedded with the Marines, and filmed a pro-war documentary, which has the industry buzzing and right-wingers hailing him as the anti–Michael Moore. But whether he’s surviving mayhem in Ramadi or dining with Ann Coulter in Los Angeles, Evan Wright reports, Dollard’s life is a one-man combat zone. ....

... Once a rising star at William Morris, he was fired in the mid-90s for chronic absenteeism brought on by drinking and drug abuse. He attended 12-step meetings and bounced back, playing a critical role in getting Soderbergh’s Traffic made. Propaganda Films tapped him to head its management division, and in 2002 he produced Auto Focus, the Paul Schrader–directed biopic about the murder of Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane—a film in which Dollard has a cameo in drag. Dollard co-founded Relativity, a firm which would assist the Marvel Entertainment Group in its half-billion-dollar production deal and went on to produce, after Dollard’s exit, Talladega Nights. But by 2004, Dollard was bingeing again. ... ....

... But Dollard was not planning a suicide, at least not a quick one. Dressed in what he would later describe as his “scumbag hipster agent’s uniform”—Prada boots, jeans, and a black-leather jacket—he boarded a plane for New York, then Kuwait City. From there he hopped a military transport to Baghdad and embedded with U.S. Marines in order to make a “pro-war documentary.” ....

... Dollard was soon invited on Tony Snow’s radio show on Fox and spent as much time railing against Hollywood liberalism as he did talking about Iraq. Snow, weeks away from becoming White House press secretary, loved it. He called Dollard a “true believer” and invited him back for two more appearances. Dollard was soon hailed by conservative columnists in U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Times. The New York Post dubbed him the “H’wood Warrior.” No small part of his appeal to the right is the fact that Dollard was once a “doctrinaire liberal” who could even boast of close ties to Robert Kennedy Jr., but now speaks of his pro-war stance in the most militant terms: “This is a propaganda war, and if I can fight with a camera the same as a Marine with his rifle, I will.” ....

From hilarity to rage in less than two minutes. In laymen’s terms, Dollard is “intense.” Some might use words like “manic” or “bipolar”—a condition Dollard’s mother believes he might suffer from—but Dollard bristles at any suggestion he is clinically off balance. “True,” he says, chewing a strip of bacon, “I was told to get a cat scan”—after being blown up in Iraq—“but I feel fucking fine.” .... (FIFTEEN more pages)





http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

Assault in the quarter, cont'd (CORRECTED)

Many reporters have been (rightly) cautious about describing an assault on a Jindal aide in New Orleans last Friday as linked to politics, and Jindal's office has done its best to damp down that storyline.


But a New Orleans Police Department spokesman now tells a conservative blogger that the assault was "of a political nature," which a source of Brett Michael Dykes' backs up.


New Orleans Police Department Spokesman Bob Young tells me that "that information is part of the investigation," and that he hasn't been told whether the assault was political or not."

"I have no idea what the motive was," he said.

Young said he'd spoken yesterday to a conservative blogger, Pat Dollard, who asked him repeatedly whether the attack was politically motivated, and that he'd told him he didn't know.

Dollard quoted him saying the attack was politically motivated, but an irritated Young said the quote was the opposite of what he'd said and "completely incorrect."

UPDATE: The AP gets a police report, and finds no evidence it was political -- which a victim echoes.

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