Joshua Sparling, the veteran who Slave tells us was spat at by antiwar protesters at the Mall on Saturday, has had unfortunate run-ins with the antiwar left before. As Fox & Friends and Michelle Malkin reported, when Sparling was recovering at Walter Reed Hospital, he got a Christmas card with a death wish in it:
Note the messy handwritten, the sort you would expect from unkempt hippies. Also, the name "Miguel" isn't even really American.
What are the chances that the one veteran spat at by antiwar protesters is also the one to receive this sort of Christmas card?
But Sparling's media-covered abuse at the hands of the antiwar crowd doesn't stop there. Last spring, Sparling's father described how he was insulted at an airport while in a wheelchair:
- We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go.”
My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out.
When he appeared on Hannity & Colmes after the protest, Sparling also said that several of the protesters were going to try to kill him. (For whatever reasons, the NYT missed this.) Actually, Sparling has made several media appearances since Saturday, adding further details to his account of last weekend. But he's not exactly new to the spotlight: Sparling has been on Hannity & Colmes several times before last weekend, as it turns out.
Nor were those Sparling's only brushes with fame. On one of his appearances on Hannity & Colmes last year, he described being the guest of Vice President's Cheney's wife for last year's State of the Union address:
- COLMES: How did he get chosen? How did it come about
that last night he was in the gallery? Were you with
him last night at the State of the Union address?
SPARLING: Yes. As a matter of fact, I was sitting
beside Vice President Cheney's wife.
COLMES: Did you talk to her?
SPARLING: Yes, I did.
COLMES: What did you talk about?
SPARLING: She's a very nice lady. And I can see, you
know -- very, very kind-hearted family.
Sparling has also appeared at Oliver North's Freedom Alliance concerts as a "special guest," along with such other special guests as Ann Coulter. Not bad for an ordinary vet.
Meanwhile, many people are raising questions about the accuracy of the NYT's reporting, including Sparling, who denies that he spat back. Oddly enough, several other newspapers also covered Sparling fairly closely -- it's like everyone knows that bad things just happen to the man -- and saw no spitting. Perhaps the NYT didn't get the memo from the overlords of the vast left-wing media conspiracy telling everyone to keep quiet about it.
Other observers report that Sparling got a round of applause from the protesters for his service to the country, but maybe this was just a ploy so that he'd be off-guard later when they tried to spit on him.
Here's a picture of the crowd Sparling came with:
Classy. They don't look they were inclined to start anything.
Anyone wanting to read more about this Sparling fellow should start with
Digby's blog and follow the various links. But the more you look, the worse it all gets.
Maybe he's just unlucky.
