#WarOnWomen: SC AFL-CIO president uses bat to repeatedly bash Haley effigy
ABC News sets the scene:
Donna Dewitt, the outgoing president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, is seen in this video bashing a piñata of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s face while Dewitt and her colleagues were at a retreat in Columbia, S.C. Saturday afternoon.
“Well I will say, she looks like a tough old girl here,” Dewitt says as she gears up to swing at the piñata.
She repeatedly hits the piñata, which bears the phrase “Unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina” below Haley’s face. In her State of the State address this year, Haley said, “We’ll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted and not welcome in the state of South Carolina.” Dewitt whacks the piñata down and continues to wail away at it once it’s fallen. Onlookers cheer her on, urging her to continue hitting the piñata.
“Give her another whack. Whack her again,” a woman screams.
“Hit her again” another man says.
The video is around 30 seconds. Click below to watch it:
Dewitt defended her actions:
Dewitt told ABC News she has no regrets about the incident and said there was “no ill intent” in what she was doing. Dewitt said her colleagues brought the pinata and were using it as a “memoir” of Haley’s words and actions towards unions in her time as governor.
“They made it and I would have played the game with them no matter it would have been pin the tail on the donkey with Nikki Haley’s face on it. I still would have played,” Dewitt told ABC News over the phone. ”There was no ill intent. We were certainly have a good time. I’m not mad or angry.”
“We’ve been the brunt of her comments now for two years and that’s what the whole thing was. She’s been whacking at us over the last two years,” Dewitt, who has been president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO for the past 16 years and will retire at the end of June, continued.
Do I think Dewitt was fantasizing about that REALLY being Gov. Haley she was beating down with that bat? No (and btw, if it were a man who had been doing the hitting, would NOW have stepped in? Nah.). Nevertheless, the imagery is disturbing – and dare I say a blatant violation of President Obama’s established New Tone Order where we’re all supposed to be civil to each other over tea and toast and not say or do anything that would make our fellow man feel compelled to go out and commit a violent act. Since the mainstream media happily went along with him in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by doing their level best not to use words or display actions that might “incite violence”, I’m sure they – along with liberal pundits and politicos – will be lined up to express their outrage and condemnation at the very thought that someone, especially a person in a position of power and influence like Dewitt, would symbolically bash the pinata head of her organization’s chief opposition – and a nationally known Governor at that.
The video has proved to be a big embarrassment for the national AFL-CIO, which reportedly wants the video taken offline (via Michelle Malkin). Not quite sure why the concern, considering much worse tactics displayed by the AFL-CIO in the past towards its political opposition. Maybe they’re just trying to clean up their act during a crucial election year. Unfortunately for Big Labor, their paper trail – nor their video trail – can be erased from history.
Cross-posted to Public Secrets, where I am helping out my co-blogger this week.