The chair-throwing evidence

Marin and Reno filmmaker Adryenn Ashley was at the Nevada Democratic Convention on May 14 and shot what is probably the most frequently shown footage of the convention, of a delegate lifting a chair and then putting it back down on the floor.

This footage has been used repeatedly and posted on numerous websites and shown on television.

The interesting thing is that the search for evidence of chair throwing apparently became so desperate that some folks are citing this footage of someone not throwing a chair as evidence that chairs were thrown.

A site called AmericaBlog, for instance, ran the footage under the headline “Video shows Sanders-supporting chair thrower at Nevada Dem convention.”

In a May 21 email message to the RN&R, state Democratic publicist Stewart Boss cited the footage as proof of chair throwing.

This use of the footage became common enough that Real Clear Politics noted, “After the catastrophe at the Democratic convention in Nevada, establishment Democrats are blaming the whole thing on violent Sanders supporters. They claim that Sanders supporters were throwing chairs, and link to a video where no chairs are thrown” (emphasis in the original).