Andrew Meyers

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Andrew Meyers is either a victim of the suppression of free speech, or an irritating twit who got his just desserts.

Free speech incident

On Sept. 17, 2007, while attending a talk by John Kerry at the University of Florida, Andrew Meyers was tasered by the police and subsequently arrested.[1] His crime? Speaking past his allotted time and asking Kerry a question about a sensitive subject.[2] Andrew Meyers was released after a night in jail; two of the officers involved were put on leave. After his microphone was shut off, he was escorted aside and tried to break away. As he was doing so, the officers forced him to the ground, handcuffed him and then tasered him. During the tasing, he reportedly shouted, "Don't tase me, bro!" giving rise to a new meme. The event, caught on video, briefly made him a minor martyr to "free speech."

A dose of reality

Standing back to see the whole picture shows us a side of Meyer that waters down his claims of martyrdom. He has what is called a "disorganized diatribe" on the "world wide web" that criticizes the Iraq War, the news media for not covering the conflict enough, and the American public for paying too much attention to celebrity news.

Basically what he did was aggressively insist on shoving his way to the front of the line, ahead of all the other questioners, so he could bring up two pet points: Kerry's membership in Skull and Bones, and alleged vote fraud in Ohio, which Kerry allegedly won but wouldn't challenge. Turns out he was just a jerk, not a hero, or perhaps a jerk can also be a hero (or vice versa?).

gollark: (also, for Discord I use the browser version which can't read keys when its tab isn't selected, so this is still usefulish)

gollark: For non-Discord applications.

gollark: I wrote a python program to implement push to talk on Linux by (un)muting the microphone: https://github.com/osmarks/random-stuff/blob/master/ptt.py

gollark: I write in markdown and have a script compiling it to HTML, as well as some other things.

gollark: ... maybe?

References

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[1] YouTube video

[2] Student arrested, Tasered at Kerry event, USA Today, September 18, 2007