Politico And Yahoo News’ The Newsroom Discuss My New Orleans Beatdown Post

Ben Smith at Politico:

Many reporters have been (rightly) cautious about describing an assault on a Jindal aide in New Orleans last Friday as linked to politics, and Jindal’s office has done its best to damp down that storyline.

But a New Orleans Police Department spokesman now tells a conservative blogger that the assault was “of a political nature,” which a source of Brett Michael Dykes’ backs up.

New Orleans Police Department Spokesman Bob Young tells me that “that information is part of the investigation,” and that he hasn’t been told whether the assault was political or not.”

“I have no idea what the motive was,” he said.

Young said he’d spoken yesterday to a conservative blogger, Pat Dollard, who asked him repeatedly whether the attack was politically motivated, and that he’d told him he didn’t know.

Dollard quoted him saying the attack was politically motivated, but an irritated Young said the quote was the opposite of what he’d said and “completely incorrect.”

Excerpted from Yahoo News “The Newsroom”:

Last Friday night, Allee Bautsch, the chief fundraiser for Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, was violently assaulted, along with her boyfriend, outside of a famed New Orleans restaurant. Initial reports on the incident were murky, but Yahoo! News has learned that the attacks appear to have been politically motivated, and that Bautsch has been hospitalized for days to treat her injuries.

Though the nature of the attack has remained a bit of a mystery, some conservative blogs reported that Bautsch and Brown might have been targeted because they were wearing lapel pins expressing support for Sarah Palin. The former Alaska governor gave an address at the Leadership Conference that same day — but a Jindal spokesperson has since denied that either Bautsch or Brown was wearing a Palin pin.

That account has not been confirmed, but Yahoo! News spoke to a friend of Allee Bautsch who’s been in communication with her since the attack. The friend, who declined to be named because the attackers are still at large, described the group who descended on Bautsch and Brown as “some weird Bobby Jindal protesters” there in opposition to the state’s governor. The friend confirmed the earlier reports that Bautsch “got caught in the middle” of the altercation as she tried to break it up. Bautsch’s friend also reported that she’s in “loads of pain” with “rods in her leg and ankle,” but that she was also “released yesterday from the hospital and is resting at her home in Baton Rouge.”

While other details of the incident are still being fleshed out, this afternoon NOPD Public Information Officer Bob Young told blogger Pat Dollard that the assault “was of a political nature” (although Young, after twice reconfirming to Dollard, later back-tracked to say he wasn’t sure). In addition, eyewitnesses to the incident have variably described the assailants as appearing to be left-wing activists or anarchists. While attention has recently focused on threats and anger among conservative activists opposing health care reform, the attack on Bautsch and Brown appears to be an ugly reminder that vicious behavior exists on all sides of the political spectrum.