Liberal talk-show host Randi Rhodes suffered painful facial injuries Sunday night when she slammed to the ground in an murky incident alternately described as a mugging, a fall, a drunken stumble and a right-wing hate attack.
The lawyer for the Air America star confirmed only that Rhodes had been “propelled to the ground” while walking her dog outside her East Side apartment, but offered no other details except that nothing had been stolen.
The hullabaloo began Monday night when Jon Elliott, another network host, reported that the loose-lipped lib, who takes her name from Ozzy Osbourne’s late guitarist, Randy Rhoads, had been mugged at 39th Street and Park Avenue, a hop, skip and jump from her apartment.
She was badly beaten and lost several teeth, Elliott claimed.
Then, according to Taking Radio, a blog that follows Air America’s programming, Elliott raised the specter of a vast right-wing conspiracy.
“This does not appear to me to be a standard grab-the-money-and-run mugging,” he intoned. “Is this an attempt by the right-wing hate machine to silence one of our own?”
Absolutely not, insisted Rhodes’ lawyer Robert Gaulin.
“It was an unfortunate event, but there is no reason to believe she was a target and certainly no reason to believe this was a hate crime in any way,” he said.
Elliott, he added, “can say whatever he wants, but he never spoke to us so he doesn’t know what actually happened.
“Randi was propelled to the ground and injured. She didn’t see it coming and she didn’t walk into something,” he said.
“It just happened in a flash,” he added. “She was hit down so hard and fast she doesn’t know what happened.”
Gaulin was repeatedly asked whether the word “propelled” meant that Rhodes had been pushed.
Each time, he replied that he didn’t know because he wasn’t there – and what’s more, the talk-show host didn’t know because she was disoriented by the incident.
The mystery was deepened by the facts that Rhodes didn’t file a police complaint or call an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
The story was the buzz of the blogosphere. There were hundreds of postings on the subject.
An anonymous contributor to Gawker.com said Rhodes fell after drinking 14 Bloody Mary’s at a Midtown Irish pub.
Gaulin said, “I have no response to that. We have not discussed it.”
A canvass of half a dozen Irish bars in the area turned up nothing.
And after causing all the fuss, Elliott backpedaled furiously last night, saying, “I shouldn’t have speculated based on hearsay that Randi Rhodes had been mugged and that it may have been an attack from a right-wing hate machine.”
Rhodes, whose program is broadcast from 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays, hasn’t been on the air this week, but is expected to return tomorrow.