This video shot by the Columbus Dispatch from this week's Honk and Wave in Support of Health Care at Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy's district office contains a segment where the teabaggers mock and scorn a Parkinson's victim telling him "he's in the wrong end of town to ask for handouts", calling him a communist and throwing money at him to "pay for his health care". Watch it:
The Parkinson's patient, Robert A. Letcher, 60, is a former nuclear engineer with a doctorate from Cornell University. Today the Dispatch posted a follow-up story on the rally and Letcher:
A demonstrator at a Columbus health-care rally who was chided for looking for a handout "on the wrong end of town" actually is a former nuclear engineer with a doctorate from Cornell University.
Robert A. Letcher, 60, had no way of knowing that attending the rally would make him a flashpoint in the raging national health-care debate.
But the treatment of Letcher, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, by two opponents of health-care legislation instantly became the topic of Internet chatter and bloggers and was given a prime spot on cable-news programs in the past two days.