The Dope on DePape
30th October 2022
Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by a man with a hammer at the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday morning. CNN has strung a series of reports on the attack here. CNN’s first report of the assault was posted at 11:08 a.m. on October 28. By 2:25 p.m. Gavin Newsom had attributed the attack to “divisive and hateful rhetoric.” By 7:25 p.m. President Biden had observed that assaulter’s query — “Where’s Nancy?” — was the same one used during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Defamation dies in darkness. The Washington Post therefore assigned three reporters to the case. By 7:00 a.m. on October 29 the Post had nailed it down: “Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her.” The subhead was equally unsubtle: “A man with right-wing views who broke into the House speaker’s home yelled ‘Where is Nancy?’ before assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer, police say.” The Post must have capitalized “Where is Nancy” to indicate it’s part of the right-wing code.
Michael Shellenberger has taken note. Shellenberger is the long time Bay-area resident and author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities (2021). Shellenberger finds the attacker — David DePape — to be more in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis than ideology-induced fanaticism.
The speculation I’ve seen on the web, granted among people who have even less respect for the Pelosis than I do (zer0), characterize it as a Grindr date gone wrong. This is usually followed by an assertion that the truth won’t come out until after the election because Democrat apparatchiks fear the truth’s effect on their electoral prospects.
I guess we’ll find out….