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Oct

17

Journalist reporting @Palin rally gets kicked


Joe Killian tells his story:

After the speech was over I was walking around getting peoples’ reactions to it when I wandered into several clusters of sign waving Obama supporters outside the stadium area. They were surrounded by McCain-Palin folks and both sides were yelling at each other.

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.

As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

“Hey, hey,” I said. “I’m trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?”

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of “U.S.A” by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?!” the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. “Yeah, that’s real funny…” he said.

And then he kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

From my position there I saw the bottoms of a number of feet almost accidentally stomping me to death as the two political camps screamed back and forth, the music continued to blare and some of the Obama crowd moved the large bearded man and his friends away. When I was helped to my feet the bearded man was walking away quickly.

I recommend reading the full entry.

Here’s the story Killian filed on the rally itself and here’s Mark Binker of the News-Record with the backstory of the rally, the concerns and the incident with Killian.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:49 am October 17th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Campaigning, Media, Politics, Sarah Palin, WH2008 

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