I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the question of just how tolerant I am of people being dicks. I know that to some extent, I admire dicks. Bill Maher is a dick, and I generally like him. Of course, he’s funny, so there’s that. But I’m thinking more of the people from Americans for Prosperity who put up a tent in the middle of the right-to-work protests in Michigan. The only reason they did it was to be dicks and hopefully get the protesters to misbehave.

I try to turn it around. Would I have thought it clever if some guy had handed out copies of the Socialist Worker at Tea Party rallies? Yeah, I probably would have gotten a kick out of that. And if that guy had gotten in a fight? Well, it would depend. If some Tea Party person had just come up and slugged him, I would be angry. But if a confrontation happened where pushing led to punching, well, that happens. And I think I would have realized that “my guy” was being kind of a dick.

Yesterday, I saw a clip of Steven Crowder on Fox News. He was the guy who got punched by one of the protesters. Even if we accept Crowder’s claims (and we shouldn’t—see below), there is a very big difference between this situation and the Socialist Worker guy at the Tea Party. The people at the Tea Party rally were mostly upper income people: not necessarily rich, but secure. Crowder and his gang are being dicks around people who will be hit hard by this legislation. So Crowder is more like a kid loudly rooting for the concentration camp director Amon Goeth at a screening of Schindler’s List: yes, yes, free speech, but if the kid ends up bruised, no one is going to shed any tears.

Now it turns out that Steven Crowder selectively edited his video to make it look like the punch he got was unprovoked. The unedited footage shows that the guy who punched him was on the ground right before. He was there due to an altercation. Just the same, there is no indication that Crowder had anything to do with it. But this is what happens when you get into the middle of a fight. This is why most people do not get into the middle of a fight.

So it seems that Crowder is following in the footsteps of James O’Keefe, with the added feature of being a big whiner. (Actually, when it comes to it, I’ll bet that O’Keefe will whine like the rest of them.) Republicans are big on claiming that foreign civilians deserve to be bombed, minorities deserve to live in poverty, and women deserve to be raped—because they live, work, or walk in the wrong places. But when a conservative white man gets bruised after he jumps into the middle of a fight he helped to instigate? That’s an outrage!

The good aspect of this is that Steven Crowder will likely continue to have to hang with people like Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and the black-haired guy who is not Steve Doocy.

Update (14 December 2012 11:13 am)

The Young Turks covered the story. Watch it, it gives more details: