When I was a left-winger scribbler in those halcyon days when I toiled for an alternative weekly in New Orleans, I always had Friday dinner with a group of like-minded folks.

Some were journalists and others were activists. What finally bothered me so much about these people that I quit going was the way they treated…well…the people.

The most memorable evening was the one on which these jerks summoned an elderly chef from the kitchen and lambasted him for some minor mistake. It was my first inkling that the left treats regular people like dirt.

It is exactly this disregard for regular people who work hard every day to keep their families afloat that is the hallmark of Occupy Wall Street. Kristen has already written about how Occupy hooligans have engaged in vandalism, denied food to the homeless, and turned on street vendors.

I’ve blogged about the 78-year-old woman who was shoved to the ground by Occupy hooligans here in Washington. She was attending an Americans for Prosperity conference on the American Dream (“Occupy Vs. the American Dream”).

Alana Goodman has a report on the incident (“Injured Grandma Recounts ‘Sickening’ Class with Occupy DC Thugs”) that has me filled with disgust. The woman in question is Dolores Brodersen, and she is hardly a member of the 1 percent. Alana writes:

Delores, a grandmother of three, is a retired special education teacher. She worked in the Detroit public school system for 40 years. And she lives on a pension. “A Michigan education pension,” she told me over the phone. “I’m certainly not rich and I never have been. I’m a teacher. I’m retired. I never made a lot of money.”

Dolores took an 11-hour bus ride to attend the Koch dinner in D.C., part of a $350 package she purchased through Americans for Prosperity. After a short hospital visit, she’s now back home in Michigan, trying to put the events from that day behind her. But some effects still linger: bruises, headaches in the back of her head, and anxiety. “Talking about it makes my stomach sick,” she said. “I was feeling so bad this afternoon after talking about it. [Reporters] wanted to come in and film it, and I just couldn’t do it.”

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, will you condemn the thugs who knocked over Delores Brodersen?