Moral Monday & McClatchy: Preachers in Court. (What’s this about F.I.S.T?) | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton keeps a watchful eye on McClatchy and liberal media bias in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    For months, we've been subjected to stories from our state's dwindling, money-bleeding mainstream media fawning over Big Bill Barber's Traveling Circus & Freak Show. We've been told that Moral Monday is simply a bunch of average-joe mainstream North Carolinians upset with those dastardly Republicans running the show in Raleigh. Some of our reporting - as well as that by our friend Lady Liberty - has poked hole after hole in that ridiculous spin.

    We were scanning a story on the McClatchy-Raleigh web site this weekend about Moral Monday-ers in court, when we stumbled across this gem:

    [...] General Assembly police Chief Jeff Weaver was again on the stand much of the day, facing defense attorney Irving Joyner's line of questioning that tried to establish that Weaver overstepped his authority in interpreting rules for public access at the statehouse and that he overreacted.

    Weaver testified that police had information earlier that day that there would be a large number of arrests. He said the NAACP-sponsored march into the building did not concern him protesters began chanting "fight, fight, fight" and he recognized several people who had been arrested in the past, including members of a local socialist group calling itself Raleigh F.I.S.T. (Fight Imperialism - Stand Together) whom he knew had been arrested before.

    Yikes! What a poorly-constructed, nightmarishly-long run-on sentence! More:

    (The group's website says it "has been extensively involved in counter-military recruitment," among other things.)

    Oh, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't forget to mention the web site's sub-heading describing F.I.S.T as "Revolutionary Socialist Youth in the U.S. South." More:

    "You were freaked out by this 'fight, fight, fight'?" Joyner asked. "...You allowed that to taint your conclusion about what these defendants were ready to do or likely to do?"

    "I was concerned about it, I wasn't freaked out," Weaver said. "I saw two individuals raising their fists. I knew it was an emotional issue."

    The police chief explained that the dozen who were ultimately arrested were taken into custody because they refused to disperse when ordered to three times. Raleigh Police Department officers were called in to make the arrests, because Weaver's staff is small. [...]

    First, there are rules for conducting yourself in public areas. You can't drop 'trou' on the sidewalk. You can't drive on the left side of the road. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

    Second, it's about time for McClatchy and WRAL to stop lying to their readers. Stop painting Moral Monday as mom-and-pop average Joe middle America and start portraying them for what they really are: Professional leftist hell-raisers and Chapel Hill-Carrboro's craziest and smelliest.