Inciting hatred
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
Interesting article here.
The heated reactions of listening crowds during some recent McCain and Palin speeches have been interesting, to say the least. Repeated claims of unfair treatment by 'the media' seem to have encouraged reactions like this one:
"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," [Palin] said.
"Booooo!" replied the crowd.
"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued.
Unspoken in this particular case is the now-common argument that 'the media' (as if all media outlets are one and the same) has a Democratic/liberal bias that taints every snippet of reporting that it produces. Certainly no one would dispute that the NY Times has a relatively left-leaning editorial page. But its newsroom is quite mainstream and is an important source of reporting on domestic and foreign news. Also note the irony here--Palin encourages her audience to boo the Times, yet conjures up its reporting credentials in order to make her point about Obama. If the Times is truly so horrible and unreliable, why is she reading it?
But much worse is the statement I quoted above, shouted out after Palin attempts to link Obama to the former domestic terrorist William Ayers.
"And, according to the New York Times, [Ayers] 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.
Now I don't mean to suggest that Palin has actually called for the assassination of Obama. Clearly that's not the case. But I do wonder whether the hatred of this audience member has been spurred on by campaign rhetoric that has consistently pushed the idea that Obama is un-American, that he is different in a frightening way, that he's just not like you and me and that we should fear that. Clearly there is an audience for this kind of sentiment--think of those mysterious forwarded e-mails discussing Obama's 'secret Muslim' identity, or the apparently-joking (but maybe not really) "confusion" of 'Obama' with 'Osama', not to mention the trolls lurking in comment boards posting nonsense about "B. HUSSEIN Obama" (again, emphasizing the -difference-, and perhaps attempting to create a mental association with Saddam Hussein). I worry that when the McCain campaign makes statements emphasizing difference and supposed foreignness, they are feeding into some very dark xenophobia lurking in the hearts of a small but vocal segment of the population.
Interesting article here.
The heated reactions of listening crowds during some recent McCain and Palin speeches have been interesting, to say the least. Repeated claims of unfair treatment by 'the media' seem to have encouraged reactions like this one:
"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," [Palin] said.
"Booooo!" replied the crowd.
"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued.
Unspoken in this particular case is the now-common argument that 'the media' (as if all media outlets are one and the same) has a Democratic/liberal bias that taints every snippet of reporting that it produces. Certainly no one would dispute that the NY Times has a relatively left-leaning editorial page. But its newsroom is quite mainstream and is an important source of reporting on domestic and foreign news. Also note the irony here--Palin encourages her audience to boo the Times, yet conjures up its reporting credentials in order to make her point about Obama. If the Times is truly so horrible and unreliable, why is she reading it?
But much worse is the statement I quoted above, shouted out after Palin attempts to link Obama to the former domestic terrorist William Ayers.
"And, according to the New York Times, [Ayers] 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.
Now I don't mean to suggest that Palin has actually called for the assassination of Obama. Clearly that's not the case. But I do wonder whether the hatred of this audience member has been spurred on by campaign rhetoric that has consistently pushed the idea that Obama is un-American, that he is different in a frightening way, that he's just not like you and me and that we should fear that. Clearly there is an audience for this kind of sentiment--think of those mysterious forwarded e-mails discussing Obama's 'secret Muslim' identity, or the apparently-joking (but maybe not really) "confusion" of 'Obama' with 'Osama', not to mention the trolls lurking in comment boards posting nonsense about "B. HUSSEIN Obama" (again, emphasizing the -difference-, and perhaps attempting to create a mental association with Saddam Hussein). I worry that when the McCain campaign makes statements emphasizing difference and supposed foreignness, they are feeding into some very dark xenophobia lurking in the hearts of a small but vocal segment of the population.