4 Comments Add your own

• 1. Zach W.  |  October 12th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

  

  Elliot, maybe I’m splitting hairs, but Biden’s talking about McCain and Palin. You and I both know there are kooks on both sides of the political spectrum, but this is about the personal attacks Sen. Mccain and Gov. Palin have launched on Sen. Obama themselves.

• 2. John  |  October 13th, 2008 at 9:20 am

  

  I have to echo Zach’s comment. I read the ridiculous Malikn piece, and she only reinforced the point: There are wackos on all sides, and she went ahead and showed the wackos who attack her side. They surely look like wackos, too.

  But this is what is so disturbing about the current ugly climate among McCain/Palin followers: These people are NOT “nutjobs.” They are otherwise perfectly normal elderly women, for instance, who assume Obama is “Arab” because the wink-and-a-smile use of his “other-sounding” middle name by right wing commentators and the fear it induces. This is encouraged by McCain’s people and by McCain/Palin’s tone on the stump.

  We see Palin openly question Obama’s patriotism, asking, “Just who IS he?” They whip their followers into a fear- and hate-filled froth and then act SURPRISED when the people who pile into their otherwise sedate minivans to attend their rallies start yelling “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!”

  We see normal-looking folks people – – happy to provide their first and last names – – saying to a camera: “It’s in his bloodlines” when asked if they fear Obama is a terrorist.

  In the same clip, a child is overheard saying “You need gloves to touch him!”

  They didn’t get this from some fringe website. They got it from McCain and Palin and the Rovians they’ve deployed to sow fear and hate.

  Some of the more inarticulate right wing bloggers like to ridicule progressives as “the Kumbaya crowd.” I’ll take that over frothing rage any day.

  Idiots and dinks on both sides? Absolutely. But the point here is that the dinkery on the McCain/Palin side is aided and abetted by McCain/Palin and their squawk radio confederates. I’m not impressed by their embarrassment or calls to “raise the tone” now that the seeds they’ve sown have sprouted.

• 3. JJ  |  October 13th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

  

  You guys gotta be kidding right? For 8 years, all we have heard from the left is that Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Satan, and Rove is the anti-Christ. I have read years worth of diatribes on wishes for assassinations for Bush and death for Cheney. Then outright glee when honorable men like Tony Snow get cancer and later die. Then lets take even a small peek at what Sarah Palin and her children have had to endure in the last 7 weeks.

  I have been at both a Palin rally and a McCain rally. There have been no death threats. None, zero, zippo, zilch, nada. When the little old misguided lady gets confused calls him an Arab, McCain shuts her down. I don’t recall Obama standing up and telling Lewis that comparing McCain to a racist segregationist is wrong.

  I’m with Elliot – Pot meet Kettle.

  But I shouldn’t expect anything else from the tolerant left that only wants free speech as long as they agree with it. Moral relativism is all that’s being taught in the public re-education and indoctrination centers these days.

• 4. John  |  October 13th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

  

  “I have been at both a Palin rally and a McCain rally. There have been no death threats. ”

  All is well, then, with the bar set so “high.” :)

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.