Victim shamming

Need a career boost? Claim a liberal mob attacked you!

The headline at National Review:

Kat Timpf Chased Out of Brooklyn Bar

I myself have been chased — bartender lingo for “forcibly ejected” — from a few saloons in my time, so I wondered what her story might be. Had Timpf — one of those pretty rightwing ladies with which Fox News keeps the target demo (repulsive geezers) comin’ back, but with glasses, signaling her great intelligence — gotten into a fight over some hunk of conservative man-meat like Jason Miller? Or had she just gone a little over the sociable limit and refused to relinquish her shotglass?

Alas, the story as Timpf and her National Review colleague Jack Crowe tell it is duller and more careerist: She claims she was (sob) preje-ma-diced against by a mean liberal mob:

After arriving at the bar, Timpf became separated from her friends and found herself in conversation with a man she didn’t know, who inquired about her occupation. Timpf explained that she worked at Fox News and the conversation proceeded unremarkably. A while later, Timpf was confronted by a woman, who, after hearing she worked at Fox News, became enraged and began shouting at her in a threatening manner.

“This girl started going nuts on me, screaming at me to get out of the bar. I found her very threatening,” Timpf said of the woman, whom she had never met before. She said she tried to move to another section of the large bar but the young woman followed her while continuing to scream.

The woman, who was visibly intoxicated at the time, was surrounded by a large group of men and women who all stood by and laughed as she harassed Timpf and followed her around the bar. After realizing no one in the group would defend her in what might become a violent situation, Timpf was forced to flee the bar.

There are a few details, or lack thereof, that don’t smell right here. For one: How far “separated from her friends” could she have been? Brooklyn joints tend to be cozy. Crowe describes the bar as “large” but that’s awfully vague; was she having drinks mid-court at Barclays Center?

And assuming they weren’t drinking in a stadium, where were Timpf’s friends while she was allegedly being chased around this bar, heckled by drunks, and “forced to flee” because “no one in the group would defend her in what might become a violent situation”?

There’s nothing in the remainder of Crowe’s dispatch about a police report, or eyewitness corroboration, or even the name of the bar. But there is plenty of Kat Timpf promo:

It’s not the first instance of politically motivated harassment Timpf has dealt with while out in Brooklyn. Last year, an unidentified man dumped a bottle of water on her head while she was preparing to speak at a local campaign event, and she was again harassed while eating at a Manhattan restaurant several months ago.

And yet she still can’t get on Meet The Press. Third time’s the charm!

“There have been times where I’m hesitant to go out with my glasses because it makes me more recognizable. But I have to live my life, I can’t let this ruin it,” [Timpf] said.

Those specs are her trademark — like Wally Cox or Arnold Stang! I tell ya, the little lady goes out in those glasses and the room starts buzzing: “Look, it's S.E. Cupp! Or maybe whatshername, the other one.” (Makes you wonder why the guy at the bar had to “inquire about her occupation,” though. Had Timpf removed her glasses to clean them, rendering her momentarily unrecognizable?)

Really, I shouldn’t be laughing — after all, Crowe will have you know, “high-profile conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have encountered a surge in premeditated public harassment of late.” Carlson recently told everyone that his home was attacked and damaged by leftists and his family terrified — which claim turned out to be extremely exaggerated, like most of what comes out of Carlson’s piehole, but was covered by the press as gospel, like most of what comes out of Carlson’s piehole. And someone was mean to Ted Cruz at dinner in September. It’s like the Third Reich!

Since someone told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to get lost back in June, it's become an article of conservative faith that liberals are skulking in alleys waiting to do the Knockout Game on Republican celebrities. This specific shtick may be new, but it’s basically just a variation on the old wingnut woe-is-me — when they realize the crowd is turning against them, they stop gloating and bullying and suddenly flop on the pitch and demand sympathy.

And really, who can blame an ambitious broadcasterette mired in the second-tier conservative press ghetto for trying to boost herself into the next level by claiming fashionable victim status? It obviously works — look, she even got Newsweek to pick it up! True, they did add that Timpf “didn’t elaborate as to where she was at the time of the alleged incident or go into specific details about what transpired” — which might ring alarm bells for the 0.001% of its readership with the sense God gave geese — but Newsweek’s next line is sort of the apotheosis of journalistic gullibility in the face of conservative gall: “Her claim that she was forced from an establishment because of her conservative political views is the latest in a string of altercations.” This unsupported assertion by a publicity-hungry talking head is part of a string of real offenses — just like Cocoa Puffs is a part of this nutritious breakfast!

Maybe down the road this will lead to a new Fox game show: Celebrity Victims.

“I was attacked by libtards in a bar!”

“Oh yeah, bitch, well libtards broke into my home!”

“My body has been colonized by libtards like thetans!”

“I am unable to laugh convincingly or achieve orgasm because somewhere on this planet a liberal laughs at my precious victimhood!”

Etc. Well, it beats The Apprentice.