Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Cry "Havoc" and Release the Brownshirts of American Politics

Damn.
Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
...
Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Tribalism. Pure, unadulterated tribalism.

Can we stop talking about the "angry left" now?

Kudos to Dana Milbank for covering this side of Palin's support.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had another Obama freakout happen yesterday: pulled up into my old truck to the county waste facility(outside Ellijay, Georgia), and the good ole boy who is the attendant, and never says a word said: "hey neighbor, You gonna vote?" "Certainly!" "Well I was just gonna tell you that we can't have that Oblama"(sic)"win. He'll put the ni**ers over the white man." "Sir, I'm pretty sure Georgia is going to go for McCain." "Well, I'm a democrat, but we don't need that Oblama. Don't you vote for him" as he eyed the 'good planets are hard to find' sticker on the bumper..."Sir, trust me to do the right thing." Wish I had had the presence of mind (in the face of this 'passionate intensity') to say, "I'm certainly not voting for ObLama!" 'cause it would be True.
I work for a bigot or I would have an Obama sticker, and my daughter does already.

low-tech cyclist said...

Yeesh! I'm glad I don't live in your neck of the woods.

Living and working in Bristol VA/TN was bad enough, especially during the fall of 1994, when the political winds were blowing in the other direction.