From a disenchanted right-wing columnist at the Denver Post:
In fact, the entire campaign has been one big act of publicity stunts. McCain’s shining moment this campaign, as far as I can tell, was a funny ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton.
Of course, that’s both true and sarcastic. McCain has taken the trivial to the level of an ideological argument. We can’t vote for the Democrat because he’s from Chicago and has sophisticated friends and went to a scary black church and once served on a board with a former radical. It’s just shameful. And more and more Republicans are just embarrassed by it. It’s creating a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359909175421497.html"lynch-mob spectacle:
Some McCain campaign officials are becoming concerned about the hostility that attacks against Sen. Obama are whipping up among Republican supporters. During an internal conference call Thursday, campaign officials discussed how the tenor of the crowds has turned on the media and on Sen. Obama.
Someone yelled “Off with his head” at a rally Wednesday for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin in Pennsylvania. Later that day in Ohio, a man stood outside a rally holding a sign that said “Obama, Osama.” At a rally in Jacksonville, Fla., on Tuesday, someone in the crowd wore a T-shirt depicting Sen. Obama wearing a devil mask.
Here’s a visual representation of John McCain’s base:
Who wants to be associated with that?
Please do not take this the wrong way. I know we need to hear these things that they are saying and doing but by repeating here are we not fanning the flames?
No: we are EXPOSING IT.
Standing against a bad and evil thing is not encouraging it.
What concerns me is that win or lose, there will be riots in the streets. I hope to hell I am wrong.
I don’t know. I don’t think there will be riots. I think there will be spontaneous celebrations from Boston to St. Louis to San Diego to Sydney to Bangkok to Baghdad, Zurich, and London.
I will be whooping it up.
My neighborhood is sort of high-class. NOt many democrats. So, I will have to do a lot of work and carry the load for many.
Sounds more like no class to me.
Whyn’tcha move somewhere…human?
AG
I really could have done without the picture, really. The point is clear enough without it. More than clear enough. Barack Obama doesn’t seem to let himself get carried way. He is a good example to follow, I think.
The banality of evil is its most dangerous characteristic.
What does this have to do with the banality of evil, anyway. Yes, evil is a simple everyday occurrence which we all commit ourselves and experience from others. So it’s banal. Look at the YouTube videos of the McCain/Palin rabble and you have seen enough to know how banal evil is. In fact, I find the expression a bit disrespectful to the victims of evil.
I think the picture is necessary. Like it or not, that’s what the GOP base has been for the last few decades. Let’s call it as it is.
Who wants to be associated with that? John McCain, that’s who. He is so desperate to be president that it wouldn’t surprise me if he secretly promised voters a night in the Lincoln bedroom with Sarah Palin thrown in for free.
He’s nastier than anything I ever scraped off the bottom of my shoe.
No thanks. I eat with these hands.
christine flowers is on board with the lynch mob crowd.
Wow, Brendan that woman is crazy. The common defense for McCain trolls on the web that I have seen is to accuse Obama supporters of unfairly calling them racist for not liking Obama. I understand they are pulling out the reverse racism card that the media has allowed the Right to play at any moment forever.
Are there ANY examples of this at all? I know they are just throwing stuff out there because they can not defend the indefensible but I have yet to see any legitimate claims of Obama campaign or surrogates calling people racists that did not deserve it.
From my friends inside Team Obama, part of their strategy is to AVOID talking about race and I think the strategy has worked.
It reminds me of the right and media falsely trumpeting the line that Obama and the Democrats were calling Palin a bad mom for her special needs baby.
flowers is nuts. I followed up with an open letter ot her editor, Sandra Shea, who lets her get away with this filth.
Those of you who are repelled by it, please go here to learn more about the real roots of your racist country.
You think that it has changed. You HOPE that it has changed.
You are wrong.
It has just exported the murdering to other countries of color. Done with a great deal more efficiency and expertise, I might add. And there are those in power who would return to those roots in a Mississippi minute.
Wake the fuck up.
James Allen-Without Sanctuary
Go learn sump’n.
Then take another look at this video.
From Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Not Peckerwood, Mississsippi, jes’ plain Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. A town named after the birthplace of the greatest pacifist who ever lived.
And start to get real.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Thanks for the link to that site (even though it’s disturbing), AG. The depravity of some “people” knows no bounds, does it?
And for someone running for president (and vp) to be actively stoking that kind of hatred…I hope that people will stand up and make sure they lose in a stunning defeat.
No one you know was involved in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib or the rest of the illegal prisons, right CabinGirl?
But they were easily found when the desire for their services became known.
They are everywhere. In every country, on every level of every society.
They always have been, and I suppose they always will be as well.
Only Lord Mayor Curran’s idea of “eternal vigilance” will serve to keep them at bay.
Only that.
Later…
AG
My favorite quote from that Denver Post article
Don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, or in any possible way defend the disgusting racism and hatred that the McCain campaign is fanning, but … those smiling white people in the photo shown are all Democrats. Remember, folks? It was Democrats who controlled the South all through the worst days of the KKK and the lynchings. It was Democrats who ran ALL of the governments in the South at the time and who supported those folks and refused to prosecute them. In fact, it was the Democrats in the government who mostly led and encouraged the lynchings.
Sorry, but to attempt to make American racism a Republican thing is historically dishonest. And, I’m sorry to say, that the racism is still very much alive and well in the Democratic Party of today. Most particularly in the War on Drugs, which is pretty much a form of racial cleansing, and which has been vigorously supported by both Democrats and Repubs every step of the way. The number of black people in prison more than doubled during the adminstration of white southerners Clinton and Gore. It has pretty much held steady under Bush. Unpleasant facts to have to face up to, but that’s the way it is. And, as much as I hate to say it, Obama has steadfastly refused to acknowledge in any way the War on Drugs, or its devastating affect on poor people and people of color.