“Yes, sir, I did. He came at me, calling me an idiot. And when … he got within my range, I threw a punch,” Rice said during an interview with Fox News.

“Then I threw a second punch, and my fist ended up in his mouth,” Rice said. “He bit my pinky finger off.”
–NBC Chicago

Let me relay some ancient and seemingly forgotten wisdom:

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.

Too many people have either never heard this before or have forgotten that it is true.

Words can sting. Words can make you angry or sad. Words can make you feel and think all sorts of things. Words can make you want to do things, which you can choose to do or not. Words can “hurt” you in those ways, but they don’t truly do you any harm. What does it matter if some person you don’t know and will probably never see again yells at you, gets in your face, and calls you an idiot? What does it really matter even if it’s someone you do know? It’s not causing any damage or harm to your person. It can’t even hurt your feelings unless you let it. It certainly doesn’t warrant hitting someone.

The first thought I had when I first heard someone’s pinky had been bitten off by an Obama supporter at a health care reform event was “What was the person who got his finger bitten off doing to make someone bite their finger off?” Then I wondered how someone’s pinky ended up close enough to someone’s mouth to get bitten off in the first place. Ever try to grab someone’s hand and move it around when they don’t want you to? Not easy. Anyway, there’s two sides to every story, you know. All I was hearing was “this poor old man had his finger bitten off by an ObamaCare supporter!” That’s a pretty violent act, and it isn’t really all that easy to get someone’s pinky in your mouth to bite it off. In order for me to bite someone’s pinky off, they’d have to be doing something fairly egregious and violent to me, and their finger would have to somehow end up in or near my mouth. At that point, by my thinking, the pinky is fair game. For all I know, the person is planning on making punch three or four … or worse.

Then the news showed the clip of Mr. Rice making the statement I quoted above. I had to rewind it and look it up on the internet to be sure I had heard correctly. Apparently, he threw a sucker punch at someone as soon as they got “into range” and then on the second punch, his fist ended up in the other guy’s mouth. There may be more to the story –I’m sure we’ll hear all about it– but using William Rice’s own words explaining how he became detached from his pinky, I’m going to have say I won’t be shedding any tears for him.

Of course, I don’t run the justice system, so no doubt the currently unknown finger-biter will end up in jail, and Mr. Rice will continue to be shown as the victim for losing a bit of a finger while he was punching someone in the face for yelling at him and calling him an idiot.

What an idiot.