Grown-Ups who use kids as political props are assholes

So I saw a story with this picture
.
and the following caption:
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Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio. (AP Photo/Randy Snyder)
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But (Surprise!) it looks like this guy has had this problem before:

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Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)
October 28, 2000, Saturday
SECTION: News; Pg. P1A
LENGTH: 861 words
HEADLINE: Signs for Bush taken at rally, father, son say
BYLINE: SAM TRANUM

Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into the rally for Vice President Al Gore.

But each time they raised a sign, someone would grab it out of their hands, the two Huntington residents said. And sometimes it got physical.

"I expected some people to take our signs," said Louis, 12. "But I did not expect people to practically attack us."

The two said they didn't go to the Friday morning rally to start trouble.

"I came to support Bush and try to change some people's minds," Louis said.

Gore's West Virginia campaign said Bush-Cheney signs were not welcome, but physical confrontations to eliminate them would not have been condoned.

Parlock, a real estate agent, thought it would be at least as educational for his son to spend the morning at the Gore rally as it would have been to spend the day at school. So the two got in the car and drove from Huntington, arriving in Charleston about 9 a.m.

Parlock said he was a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign. He is listed on the West Virginia Bush-Cheney Web site as the Cabell County contact for the campaign.

But he said he came as a supporter, not a campaign worker. His visit to Charleston was "unencouraged and unsanctioned," he said. The idea was to show that there was another option besides Gore.

"My opinion of the press is it always shows the liberal viewpoint," he said. "And we have to struggle to show the other side exists."

He and Louis brought a supply of Bush-Cheney signs and smuggled them into the rally. They stuffed plastic ones in their socks and pockets and folded paper ones inside Gore-Lieberman signs.

Though tickets to the event specifically said no signs would be allowed in, Parlock said he walked right in with the Gore-Lieberman signs. He said people who carried Bush-Cheney signs openly were not allowed to bring them inside.

Parlock and his son, clad in white button-down shirts and ties, took their place in front of the Capitol steps and waited. As the rally got going, they started raising their signs and people immediately began stealing them, Parlock said.

"Three guys came up and squeezed me in and one grabbed my arms and pulled them down and another took the sign," Parlock said.

"Another guy came up and tried to grab the sign but I had a good hold of it and he stumbled and bumped into other people and started a ruckus," he said. Parlock said the police ejected the man from the rally.

Police said Friday evening they could not yet comment on any incidents at the rally.

Parlock said a group of people wearing T-shirts and jackets with the United Mine Workers of America logo took away many of their signs.

"I didn't see anything like that," said Ted Hapney, an international representative for the United Mine Workers. "I wouldn't do that. We don't condone any type of violence."

Another incident involved Louis and a teenage girl he and Parlock said they met at the rally. They said they didn't know who she was.

"She walked up and said 'I'll get on your shoulders and hold a sign,' " Louis said.

While she was sitting on Louis' shoulders waving a Bush-Cheney sign, a man who identified himself as a volunteer for the Gore campaign tried to pull the sign out of the girl's hands, Parlock said. He pulled so hard that Louis and the girl fell over.

"That sounds like an exaggeration," said Sarah Feinberg, spokeswoman for Gore's West Virginia campaign.

Parlock said the man was wearing a yellow pass around his neck. Feinberg said the color for a volunteer pass would be orange, while yellow passes were given to members of the press.

"We certainly don't have a policy of ripping signs out of people's hands," said Feinberg. "If someone brings a Bush-Cheney sign, we don't like it but we don't go to great lengths to obscure."

Parlock said after all his signs were stolen, he got some more from a group of Bush supporters who had not been allowed into the rally.

Though police said they were not ready to make official comment Friday evening, earlier Friday an officer said he had seen a scuffle during the rally.

Charleston Police Patrolman R.H. Vinyard said the incident involved people with Bush-Cheney signs, though he could not identify them by name. He said Gore supporters got into a fight with the Bush supporters about 10 minutes before the end of Gore's speech.

He said the altercation lasted about 45 seconds, was over before the police arrived to break it up and no one was treated for injuries. Afterward, he said, the Bush supporters tore up their own signs and left the area.

As workers cleaned up the debris from the rally in front of the Capitol after the rally, Parlock sat next to a pile of ripped up Bush-Cheney signs he had collected. He said he thought the people who took his signs went too far.

Still, he said he'd do it again.

And he thinks it was a good educational experience for Louis, too.

"You can't get this kind of a lesson in school," he said.

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HE'S DONE IT BEFORE! ISN'T IT A BIT TOO COINCIDENTAL?

So this guy is a political media whore who uses his kids to make the other side look bad.

I didn't figure this out by myself, but my Smart lawyer friend from Nacadoches sniffed it out. But whatever- it's not the point. The point is that it reminds me of a personal story.

Getting yourself and your kids attacked at political rallies is a classic, and Phil Parlock is continuing in that grand tradition.

Way to sniff it out, D.B., I am humbled, as always.
I've participated in this kind of this before, at a GOP rally, as the kid.

May I humbly present:

Birth of a Cynic, or The Day they Tore Up My Sign, or The Failed Publicity Stunt: How I Learned to Stop Trusting Grownups

When I was ten (almost eleven), about a week before the GOP convention in Dallas in 1984, my hippy piano teacher asks my if I want to go with him to protest Ronald Reagan coming into town, to let him know that the kids are aware of what's going on in blah-blah-blah, and how we are the future and blah-blah the Republican establishment better watch out because of blah-blah.

So that sounded great! It was my big chance to make a difference. So I worked really hard on this sign, of the "Reagan Busters" variety, like the Ghost Busters logo, except with Reagan. That was the front, and the back was a conventional Mondale/Ferraro sign. Man, I loved that sign. I think that was as close as I ever got to feeling like I was making a difference and playing an important part in the process. But I digress.

So the big days comes, and we take off downtown, but on our way he takes me to this place near Fair Park where we meets up with a bunch of no-shit CPUSA people, all of whom have kids my age and younger in tow, and they chat about where their "stations" are. At this point I'm like "Wow! real life commies! Wow! you have Ice-Cream!".

Since they weren't Russian or anything, I figured everything was more or less OK, what with the ice-cream and all.

So we all ride to wherever in a van, and get out, and go our separate ways.

My teacher and I set up near the entrance where Reagan or Bush are supposed to come in or something, in a big group of delegates. But he tells me to keep my sign down for some reason, so I do.

For a long while nothing happens. But then, the TV station showed up. Immediately, My teacher says in a loud whisper, "wave the sign!"actually puts my on his shoulders and starts screaming profanities and directly shouting at the people around us.
Pretty soon this fat guy with a moustache and a plaid jacket runs up to my teacher and shoves him. I fall off and get kicked. He grabs my sign and tears it up, shouting "God Damned Commies!"

Now I'm mad. I had worked hard on that sign (per the teachers design spec, though. "Reagan Busters" I later found out was a common theme that year). I shout "We just came here in the van with the commies!" But my teacher is too busy with the cameras to notice, shouting at them, "Do you see what they do? This is how they handle dissent! Even to attack the children!"

And then we were swallowed by the surging crowd, who wanted to get a look at somebody famous coming in.

We never did get on TV. Maybe it's because the Dallas media bias in those days was relentlessly Republican. But I suspect it was because they smelled a setup.

I kept going to piano lessons until that guy moved to Oregon, but stopped afterwards to focus on football.

I learned two things that day:

1) Politics turns otherwise OK people into assholes.
2) When you see a kid involved in politics, you're looking at a prop.