Randi Rhodes wasn't bent, folded or mutilated by legal definitions, so

[Breeze54]

therefore; IT DID NOT HAPPEN!! OK? Got that!?!

All is well, move along!! Nothing to see here!!

NOTHING HAPPENED!!!!!

Randi's teeth are fine, the War on Iraq is over and

No AAR hosts were ever given death threats!!

Life is grand, I still wear a size 5 and I won the lottery!! :sarcasm:

:toast: . :D

[jpgray]

1. Shouldn't we wait for evidence before jumping to any conclusions?

[Breeze54]

3. What conclusions? She's is missing teeth, right?

Nobody jumped to conclusions. People did speculate and with good reason.

IE. Death threats, shootings and beatings as close as last year at AAR hosts.

Even Randi doesn't know what happened to her, according to her lawyer.

One minute she was walking, and the next she was lying in the street,

missing teeth. She still was hurt and that's the bottom line, I guess.

[MonkeyFunk]

2. So you're saying

she WAS attacked? Why?

[Breeze54]

5. No. I'm saying that she doesn't even know but she was injured.

people that get knocked out , from behind, (my theory)
don't tend to know what happened to them.

The facts are that she was injured and that she's in pain and missing teeth.

[JDPriestly]

12. Sometimes people fall because they are tired or because

of a crack in the pavement that may not seem large enough to cause a fall but actually did. Sometimes people fall due to an ear infection or some other infection or illness. People fall for many, many reasons other than that they are pushed or hit from behind.

Things are bad enough without jumping to conclusions based on no information, much less evidence. Randi will let her listeners know what happened. Just be patient.

[Breeze54]

15. I'm not jumping to anything. She was hurt and she doesn't remember

what happened. Speculation isn't jumping to conclusions.

Facts are she's missing teeth and that takes force.

I've fallen on my face before too, fell off a bike going
full speed down a steep hill and I didn't loose any teeth.

[Rhythm and Blue]

16. I've fallen on my face before

(off a bike, similar to you, I suppose) and had my two front teeth gouged through my bottom lip, losing them both in the process. Fortunately, I was only 13, and the dental surgeon was able to fix me up right.

The force of a human falling flat on a hard (possibly uneven surface) from a walking position is certainly more enough to knock out a tooth. Teeth pop out easy.

[Breeze54]

18. What made her "fall" and lose consciousness?

:shrug:

[Rhythm and Blue]

20. I'll give my own version of a betting line here.

SLIPPED ON SOMETHING ON STREET: 2-1
TRIPPED OVER SOMETHING ON STREET: 3-1
FAINTED DUE TO UNDISCLOSED ILLNESS: 20-1
FREAK ACCIDENT INVOLVING SOMEONE THROWING A FULL COKE CAN OUT OF A MOVING CAR, THINKING IT WAS EMPTY: 250-1
DOG WRAPPED ITS LEASH AROUND HER IN A COMICAL FASHION: 300-1
EVIL CONSPIRACY AIMED AT C-LIST TALK SHOW HOSTS: 500-1

[Breeze54]

23. Ok...this could be a long game though.

I'll take that bet....

1.) hit in mouth by jerks in street, as she walked by, stunned, falls and hits head
2.) hit in head from behind, supported by loss of memory and lack of details/memory
3.) totally faced and tripped over dog, drunk and fell flat on her face on rock on street. :P
4.) raped (doesn't want anyone to know)
5.) unknown medical condition, ie. epilepsy (seizures)

[Rhythm and Blue]

24. Oh, forgot to include "COMPLETELY DRUNK."

I'll give that one a 10-1.

1? Not really seeing it--or, more to the point, she didn't see it. First, she apparently fell face-first; that doesn't really happen with a mouth punch. She'd have collapsed straight downward as her legs buckled, or would have been dumped on her ass. Secondly, she'd have remembered the person at least being there; most amnesia for head injuries is either a few seconds before the event or is significantly longer than that. Whatever happened happened before she noticed it.

2? Possible. But unlikely. No attacker (and no motive for there to be one), and more importantly, no evidence of a wound to the back of the head.

3? Sure.

4? Nah. Raped women trying to cover it up generally don't get lawyers and police involved.

5? Already covered.

[Breeze54]

25. #4...the police were never notified.

they hadn't heard a thing.

No report was ever filed.

:shrug:

[Rhythm and Blue]

28. Okay, amend that to,

"Raped women trying to cover it up usually don't have their lawyers speak to the press about them having been in an "incident" in which they were injured."

[Breeze54]

29. Amend that more; that unknown women don't do that (agreed)

but well known radio talk show hosts that have a co-worker announce,
on the air that a violent event took place and it snowballs to a
"hate crime" is forced to have lawyer release a statement
to appease the fans, haters and speculators and corporate! The boss!
They don't want this shit making them look bad, ya know?

I'm getting sleepy now but it was fun playing! :D

Thanks for the challenge. ;) Nice to meet you!

Welcome to DU, if I haven't told you before this! :hi:

[JDPriestly]

30. I fell flat on my face, nearly lost a tooth and broke my nose

injured my hand severely. I was very tired, not feeling well and tripped on a slightly uneven cement driveway. These things happen. I bled profusely and almost lost my tooth. It is frightening when it happens to you. The doctors do tests and try to figure out why. Hopefully, Randi is in good hands.

We all wish Randi well.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Not everything is a friggin' conspiracy.

Sigh.

[Breeze54]

6. Where in my OP did I say conspiracy?

:shrug:

[liberalmuse]

7. When someone randomly beats the crap out of you...

for no reason you can determine, it can seem like a conspiracy. Whether it is or not is a different story. I feel so bad for Randi. The sad thing is, it was probably some young males who had nothing better to do--beating up some poor, older woman. Nice.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Except it appears she fell while walking her dog. She wasn't "beat up" at all. nt

[Breeze54]

10. "Gaulin; Rhodes attorney, confirmed that Rhodes was injured after she was floored by someone"

Tue Oct-16-07 07:17 PM
Response to Original message
144. most current update here:

Attorney for radio's Randi Rhodes disputes report of NYC mugging
1:49 PM EDT, October 16, 2007

NEW YORK -

An attorney for Air America radio personality Randi Rhodes is disputing on on-air report by a colleague that the liberal talk show host was attacked on a Manhattan street.

~snip~

Elliott's account of the incident, however, was contested Tuesday by Rhodes attorney, Robert Gaulin.

Gaulin confirmed that Rhodes was injured after she was floored by someone _ or something _ as she strolled the streets of Manhattan's Murray Hill district around 8 p.m., but wasn't sure herself what sent her tumbling to the pavement.

"She hit her head on the street and was disoriented," Gaulin said. "She's not sure what happened.
She didn't see anything." He added that she never reported the incident to police.

Air America released a statement saying that "the reports of a presumed hate crime are unfounded."

Air America's vice president of programming, David Bernstein, said Rhodes missed her shows on Monday and Tuesday, but hoped to be back soon.

more:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny ...

[Rhythm and Blue]

14. Or something.

No claim of an attacker.

[Breeze54]

17. No disclaimer either.

She doesn't remember. I've never heard of a healthy
person tripping and losing teeth and consciousness.
Maybe an elderly person but a fit person?

It still sounds fishy to me....

And it's being cast as an incident, not an accident.

[Rhythm and Blue]

19. Nothing fishy about this at all.

Suppose you have a person walking along. Their foot hits a rock, and their reflexes fail them. They go down like a sack of bricks. When people fall and do not attempt in any way to break it, they go down fast, and they hit hard. She cracks her head on something. The force knocks out a few teeth and gives her a concussion.

It's a pretty cut-and-dried story as it is now. I'm not going to discount the possibility of an attack, but there's nothing in the story so far that would suggest one.

(of course it's an "incident." They don't know enough to rule anything out. Doesn't imply anything at all.)

[Breeze54]

21. There are rocks on the streets of Manhatten?

:rofl: Who knew? ;)

If it was an accident, it would have been all over the place, that she had an accident.

It's being called an 'incident', police/lawyer speak for possible crime.

Usually also means something that the victims don't want getting out in the public.

[Rhythm and Blue]

22. Um, no.

First, there's plenty of stuff all over Manhattan sidewalks, just as there are in every city. There are the occasional rocks, pebbles, chunks of concrete, misaligned sidewalks, coke cans, trash, magazines, etc., etc. Not to say that it's like walking through a Dumpster or anything, but it's not really inconceivable that someone might trip and fall.

Secondly, "Incident" is lawyer-speak for "thing that happened." It does not carry any suggestion of anything whatsoever. Since it has not been definitively established that this was an accident, they are not yet calling it an accident.

[hfojvt]

26. that's a pretty ridiculous scenario. You'd be slashed to pieces by Occam's razor

First, people fall all the time. They slip on ice, they trip over rocks, they jump down stairs and land funny, they hit cracks in the cement, they fall off skateboards, they fall down rollerskating, and iceskating, they have bicycle accidents, they fall or get pushed/knocked down in sports contests. I, myself have done all of those things, many of them several times. Out of the hundreds of falls and trips I have gone on, and not once have I been knocked unconscious or had teeth knocked out.

I am not saying it couldn't happen the way you describe, only that, in my experience, it is very, very, very, highly unlikely. It has never happened to me, and I do not read about stories of it happening to other people very frequently either.

[Rhythm and Blue]

27. Occam's razor is on my side here.

Option 1: Person walking down street falls. People fall all the time. Person manages to hit head on thing. This is very common; all that needs to happen is for the person not to appropriately break their fall. The leash in her hand may have had something to do with this; I don't know. But if you fall and hit your head on a hard surface, you're very likely to loose teeth or be knocked unconscious*.

Option 2: A person attacked her without any apparent motive, while causing no injuries other than those which are generally caused by falling face-first on a hard surface. Nothing was taken. She was apparently not beaten after hitting the ground. She does not recall there being an attacker, nor is there any immediate evidence for one. In fact, there is no reason to believe this attacker exists at all, but you cannot prove that the attacker *doesn't* exist.

Not thinking Occam's against me.



*You think that concussions from slips, trips, and falls are "very, very, very, highly unlikely?" That's simply bizarre, as slip-trip-fall injuries are (I believe) either the second or third leading cause of concussion. You think that losing a tooth from a face-first fall is "very, very, very, highly unlikely?" I'm sorry, but that's simply flat-out dead wrong. Most falls are broken, yeah. But when you have an unbroken fall, both are common results.

[piesRsquare]

31. A seizure can happen to anyone

Even someone who is otherwise very healthy. Randi may have had a seizure. Doesn't mean she has epilepsy, however.

Sometimes these things happen, and no doubt it's very frightening. We'll find out soon what happened. What's important is that Randi is okay, she's got a lot of support, and there are professionals who are taking care of her.

Hang in there.

[T Wolf]

9. The total lack of "evidence" makes ALL speculations simple expressions

of prejudiced thought.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. A week ago I was...

walking down the street at night and tripped over something. Went down like a bag of bricks-- scraped my nose and hands, screwed up one knee and one wrist, and bloodied my lip. For a minute or so I wondered if I could make it home. Might have been a lot worse if I got tangled up in a dog's leash.

I'm just sayin' that shit happens to all of us, and if she landed hard from a fall, that's bad enough. No need to make a fall into a tinfoil extravaganza.

[Breeze54]

13. From A DU Mod.... please read.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2060735&mesg_id=2060961

Rhodes attorney, Robert Gaulin.

Gaulin confirmed that Rhodes was injured after she was floored by someone _ or something _