That’s not really what happened, but there was a story today that had me in giggles for most of the morning. Basically, at a health care reform vigil and counter-protest, in Thousand Oaks of all places, a pro-health care reform guy approached an opponent, the opponent felt threatened and threw a punch, a fight ensued, and a finger was bitten off. The pro-health care reform dude, reportedly from MoveOn.org, bit off a piece of a 65-year-old man’s pinky. How gross is that? And….ironic. And…funny! I couldn’t help making jokes for at least 20 minutes, which I posted on Twitter.

No biting while protesting health care reform! http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 12 hours ago from web

Heheh. The bark is definitely worse when it comes to questioning health care reform. At least they don’t bite! http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 12 hours ago from web

Health care reform protesters wanted to give opponents the finger! http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 12 hours ago from web

You have to give them credit — health care reform advocates’ bite is definitely worse than their bark! http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 12 hours ago from web

What kind of weenie bites a finger while fighting? http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 11 hours ago from web

Maybe dude said “pull my finger” and was misunderstood? http://tiny.cc/mmmtS about 11 hours ago from web

:) I didn’t say they were funny jokes, but they did make me laugh. And that’s all that counts. And it also occurs to me — just how emotional do you have to be to chomp down on another person’s pinky finger? Yikes. That guy’s got problems.

The story, oddly enough, was not on the cover of this morning’s Ventura County Star, which I thought was strange. I even called Trinity and grilled him about it, but he recalled seeing the slug (a one- or two-word name for the story for filing purposes), but not seeing what it was about. And even so, as the designer, he does not make the decision to put it on the front or not.

And in fact, it turned out there were two different stories — the one that made it into the paper, and the one that began getting updates at 10 a.m. or so. The tone of the two stories are vastly different. Here’s the lede of the first one, which was in this morning’s paper:

Standing on the corner in front of The Oaks shopping center on Wednesday night, Diane Mars of Newbury Park talked about how she came down with flu-like symptoms but put off going to the doctor because she didn’t have health insurance through her employer.

After getting chills and not eating for several days, she paid cash to see a doctor, who finally persuaded a local hospital to admit her.

Yeah. It went on and on like that and didn’t mention the “altercation” until the 7th graf.

Here’s the story that got the updates and a link to Drudge (which all web people know is like gold):

An opponent of government healthcare programs had part of a finger bit off during a fight at a pro-healthcare-reform rally this week in Thousand Oaks.

William Rice, 65, of Newbury Park was with a small group of counter-protesters at a vigil Wednesday night organized by Moveon.org when a man bit off part of his left pinky finger during a scuffle, authorities said. Doctors were unable to reattach Rice’s finger.

The weird thing about the first story is that the headline had the news, but the writer — who I found out later is a correspondent, or freelancer — didn’t seem to realize anytime you have any kind of unusual happening, especially violence, at a routine event, that’s the news! And what infuriates me even more is that no one picked up on that! No one read the story and said, “Wait a second. This story is upside down!” No one thought to put “man bites off finger of another man” or some other variation in the original headline or in the lede. And no one thought to reconsider how the story should be played! Good grief.