On Monday, Breitbart.com reported that senior editor-at-large Ben Shapiro filed battery charges against Zoey Tur, a transgendered reporter for “Inside Edition” formerly known as Robert Albert Tur. The charges are in response to a series of threats Tur reportedly made against Shapiro.
As we reported Saturday, Tur threatened Shapiro during a discussion about Caitlyn Jenner. After asking about genetics, Tur placed a hand on Shapiro’s shoulder and said: “You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance.”
The encounter did not end there, however. According to Shapiro, Tur allegedly threatened him after the discussion ended, saying, “I’ll see you in the parking lot,” an apparent invitation to a brawl. CNN security, Breitbart added, escorted Shapiro to his car after ensuring Tur had left the premises.
On Friday, Tur approved of a tweet calling for Shapiro to be “curb-stomped.” Curb-stomping, Breitbart explained, “is a heinously violent street practice where the victim is forced to bite the corner of a cement street curb before the assailant stomps on the victims head.” The practice, John Nolte added, was “made infamous by American Nazi skinheads.” Shapiro, he added, is Jewish. Shapiro explained the reason for his report:
Just because the left has designated someone a member of the victim class does not mean that that person gets to infringe the rights of others. Until the left learns that, their aggression will not stop.
After speaking with a detective at LAPD, Shapiro said he would also pursue what Breitbart called “any possibility of charges regarding alleged criminal threats.”
As we reported at the time, panel members who witnessed the incident said Shapiro deserved to be threatened for refusing to refer to Tur as a female. The far-left wing Salon also piled on, calling Shapiro a “coward” for filing charges against Tur. Scott Eric Kaufman blamed Shapiro for the threats against him while acknowledging that Tur was “clearly in the wrong to threaten” him:
Tur was clearly in the wrong to threaten Shapiro — though whether her words and endorsement of a tweet amount to battery are a matter for the Los Angeles Police Department to decide — but Shapiro and his adoring fans utterly ignore Shapiro’s complicity in creating the hostile environment in which the threat was uttered. Shapiro is playing a coward’s game here — doing everything he can to provoke someone to violence, then running to the police the moment anyone threatens him — but it’s of a piece with his belief, epitomized in ‘Liberal Bullies,’ that conservatives are the victims of a violent culture of silencing and suppression that could potentially turn violent.
Newsbusters’s Ken Shepherd said Salon’s “headline editors also set the blame-the-victim tone for readers with the wording of the headline.” The headline clearly faults Shapiro and suggests he deserved to be threatened. “Ben Shapiro files police report against trans woman Zoey Tur for her response to his deliberate provocations,” Salon said.
In an update, Salon said Tur said Shapiro lied about threatening to engage in a parking-lot brawl. According to an email, Tur reportedly said that “the only conversation I had with Shaprio [sic] was on camera. I left the studio for home before he was off the set. CNN can confirm that.”
Tur also bristled at the suggestion of anti-Semitism. “I didn’t know what curb stamp meant until Saturday,” Tur said. “Oh, and I’m Jewish. Even saved an IDF soldier during a Katyusha rocket attack [Israel’s war with Hamas/Lebanon].”
“Shapiro and his rag made that anti-Semitic stuff up,” Tur told Salon. “How can a Jewish woman that performed a tracheotomy on an IDF soldier during war be a neo-Nazi?” Breitbart, however, never called Tur a “neo-Nazi.” Nolte, however, did explain the origin of “curb-stomping.”
Shapiro, however, did the right thing by filing charges. In February 2011, we first noted that liberalism, at its core, is an ideology of rage and hate. Liberals, sadly, have proven that assertion correct on just about any given day. Now it seems some on the left think they have carte blanche to threaten those with whom they disagree. Worse yet, it seems others on the left are more than willing to justify any behavior no matter how appalling or illegal.
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