Rallies as Lynch Mob
Ladies and gentlemen, the future of the conservative movement:
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.”
That’s right, it’s the fault of uppity blacks that Palin can’t give a coherent answer about her lack of foreign policy experience, can’t give a coherent answer to a question about which newspapers she reads, can’t name a single Supreme Court decision, etc. Uppity black sound engineers. If we just put them in their place, then suddenly “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate” would become a reasonable thing to say.
49 Responses to “Rallies as Lynch Mob”
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October 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am
actually she is not going to attribute all human activity to climate change.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I have generally scoffed at fatalists this election cycle, but at this point I’d have to say that the Secret Service better make sure their A team is on Senator Obama’s protection detail.
Just sayin.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Couple this with recent comments by conservatives insinuating that legislation that made it easier for minorities to get loans is a primary cause of the current housing crisis. It’s not just that racism still exists; we all know it does. It’s how brazen and in your face these sorts of attitudes appear at a time of national crisis. Americans should be less afraid about the impact on their pocketbooks of the economic downturn and more concerned about the impact of this sort of thinking (which seems to get more open approbation at moments like this) on the national psyche. Over the longrun, the latter will most likely leave a more endurng wound, and one that will have a deeper negative impact on our quality of life.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Correspondence bias.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I can’t read this – “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate” – without thinking of
According to the Kinsey Report
Every average man, you know,
Much prefers to play his favorite sport
When the temperature is low,
But when the thermometer goes way up
And the weather is sizzling hot,
Mr Adam
For his madam
Is not.
Because it’s
Too Darn Hot!
October 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Considering that this was the same rally where someone shouted “Kill him,” I definitely share his hope. At least McCain only gets his mob frenzied enough to shriek “terrorist” when he mentions Obama’s name. That’s how you can tell he’s the honorable member of the ticket.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
sarah palin’s entire political world view was developed inside the right-wing bubble, as was that of her limited but enthusiastic number of supporters. essentially, if you derive all your political knowledge from listening to fox and rush limbaugh, sarah palin and the people at her rallies are what result.
i can’t decide whether i’d prefer to have her crawl back under her rock and never be seen again or whether i’d prefer that she become the face of the gop.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I’d like some clarification. Was “boy” the racial epithet or was there an additional, unprintable one?
October 7th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I’d punch her in the face.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Look, let’s be honest about it. People who continue to support McCain-Palin at this point are moral monsters, far worse than child molesters, far worse than terrorists, and deserve to be treated as such.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:33 am
The relevant video of the rally is here at ~6:45 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72ts-IT-kfw
What’s missing from Milbank’s article is:
1. The woman screaming “terrorist!”
2. That the “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” dude yells out before Palin even mentions Ayers.
The most ironic thing about this is that calling for the death of either Obama or Ayers is an Act of Terrorism under the Patriot Act.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I’m sure Palin’s people will say it’s the sound technician’s fault because he was sitting in the section marked “Whites Only”.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:38 am
1) Yes, Palin’s supporters are morons. But that’s because they were abandoned by the Democrats.
2) Democrats let Bill O’Reilly pour his lies out on the airwaves for years WITHOUT Challenge. Same for Rush Limbaugh. What do they think will happen?
3) Barack Obama goes on Bill O’Reilly’s show. WHY would he give O’Reilly credibility as an objective commenter — when O’Reilly is a paid propagandist who has made a fortune broadcasting deceit that has brought one disaster after another down upon this country.
4) O’Reilly is already trying to hang the blame for the financial disaster onto the Democrats. Look at how he played “Bully the Democrat” with Barney Frank the other night:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijtBkKQwY8
Barney should only sit and stutter. Cry in outrage. WHY in the hell did the leadership let him go on O’Reilly? Did they think he would get a FAIR hearing?
I don’t give a shit if O’Reilly hangs Barney from a tree — but when Barney go down on TV, he takes the Democratic Party with him.
5) But how can Democrats blame rural residents for being brainwashed by O’Reilly’s deceit when Democrats have never had the courage to stand up and attack O’Reilly? Keith Olbermann is evidently the only male liberal with a testicle. Thank god we have Rachel Maddow.
6) Why can’t Democrats explain to the country that they don’t go on O’Reilly because O’Reilly is dishonest and that his dishonesty has greatly hurt this country.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I find myself growing angrier and angrier about this. During the primaries Hillary Clinton was pilloried (and I think rightly so) for a speech that seemed to suggest that part of the justification for her long candidacy was the possibility of an Obama assassination. But the fires that McCain/Palin are now stoking are a thousand times hotter and more dangerous. It is profoundly irresponsible for a presidential campaign, in the heat of an intense campaign, with frazzled and demoralized supporters bracing for a big loss, to use eliminationist rhetoric that provokes screams of “Kill him!” and “Terrorist!” from its audience. And it is, certainly, particularly disgusting in this instance, as the specter of assassination has haunted the Obama candidacy since its inception. For McCain/Palin to embark down this road, at this time, in this way, is a deep and fundamental betrayal of the democractic compact that keeps this country functional, a deliberate and calculated rhetoric of hate that in the best-case scenario won’t even help them win and in the worst could result in the unthinkable.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network AND told him, “Sit down, boy.”” [Edited for emphasis]
I think that implies a racial epithet was shouted prior to, “Sit down, boy.”
October 7th, 2008 at 10:43 am
All the Palin rallies need are a few white sheets to turn into Klan rallies.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
We need to keep letting Say-ruh be Say-ruh.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Calling a grown black man is a racial epithet.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:47 am
No, you’re getting it all wrong — they’re not mad at black people. They’re mad at sound engineers, who are failing to make Palin sound better.
It’s all their fault. Without their fancy ‘recording machines’ and what not, no one would have known about that evil Katie Couric mainstream media filter which purposefully made Palin sound like she was instead of how her supporters prefer to imagine she sounded.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I think that implies a racial epithet was shouted prior to, “Sit down, boy.”
Yes, I registered the “and”, but the phrasing is still ambiguous to me. It could be read either way. Mostly I think the press shouldn’t be in the “implying” business — if someone said “n—–”, the story should clearly say so.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Yes, you’re right, politicians exactly embody and support each and every prejudice of each and every one of their supporters.
Come on, this is almost as bad as the Right thinking Ayers dooms Obama.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Doh! Calling a grown black man a boy is a racial epithet.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I think that implies a racial epithet was shouted prior to, “Sit down, boy.”
Whether or not there was more that didn’t get printed, boy is enough to qualify as a racial epithet.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I thought it was funny that Sarah got rattled when the $10,000 plate crowd didn’t join her in chanting “Drill Baby Drill”
Who in the fuck does Sarah think owns all that Florida beachfront property? Hee hee hee
October 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
So, why don’t the liberal MSM show the mob on the ‘news’? Seriously. It seems like a no-brainer.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Jamie,
McCain and Palin both hear, or hear of, the things that are shouted (and recorded) at their rallies. McCain could have said to the guy shouting “terrorist!” that, no, his colleague Senator Obama is not a terrorist. He chose not to. It’s in moments like that that candidates show what they’re made of. McCain the Man of Honor and Integrity chose to do nothing.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:11 am
To Jamie (”Come on, this is almost as bad as the Right thinking Ayers dooms Obama”): Um, no it’s not. McCain/Palin stage these rallies to feel like a two minutes hate, to arouse the basest sort of vitriol in their supporters.
If I said that without the video evidence, people would say I’m overreacting. But over and over, we’re seeing that this ticket is nurturing the Timothy McVeigh/Randy Weaver breed of resentment that leads people to shout “Terrorist!” or “Kill him!” It’s a failure of leadership to allow your campaign to turn into a hate machine, and I think most people (including a lot of Republicans) would agree that that reflects on these clowns.
Also, the sort of emotion a politician appeals to sheds some light on the way he wants to lead (think of how Bush’s fearmongering manifested itself in his ruling style, or how Clinton’s pathological need for consensus influenced his two terms).
October 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
@tinisoli
McCain and Palin both hear, or hear of, the things that are shouted (and recorded) at their rallies.
You can actually hear fellow crowd members “shhhhh”-ing people yelling out uncouth things in the video I posted… I think it’s that and not a hiss anyway. Contrast that with Obama telling his audience to shut up every time they boo McCain the man (rather than McCain’s policies).
October 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
@Zach
That’s a good point. In the video where the supporter yells “Terrorist!” after McCain asks “Who is Barack Obama?” you can see people behind McCain (meaning farther from the shouter) either laughing knowingly, or askng the people next to them what was shouted and the laughing. There’s no question that they’re hearing this stuff.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:22 am
It seems to me at this point, Palin’s red meat speeches — the other red meat — are simply positioning her to be the 2012 candidate. You can’t out crazy her. You can’t go the right of her. She’s positioned to be the face of the revanchist right wing mob-in-waiting. Maybe she’ll go back to Alaska and secede and take the Limbaugh/Hannity/race-baiters with her. (A man’s got to have a dream.) A kind of Yiddish Policeman’s Union in reverse.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I think more needs to be said about the extreme danger posed by the escalating demagoguery demonizing the press by the right wing–and now the mccain/palin campaign. It’s fine to argue that the institution or its individual practitioners are flawed, but the campaign is instead convincing followers to be suspicious of any independent review of their stated claims. They are attacking a fundamental democratic institution.
What’s next after they’ve convinced their supporters to trust nothing but their own propaganda? What will that unquestioned propaganda urge them to do next?
October 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Serious racial acrimony is invariably associated with economic stress, anyplace in the world you want to look, at any time. We’re headed into a serious recession, at best, and Obama is about to win the election, and a significant part of the population is being whipped up into a violent froth over it. I hope Obama wins but the result is going to be angry hordes of violently angry white people, and Sarah Palin will be their mascot. Ugly days are ahead for all of us.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
And by the way, I had always expected the culture wars to start receding into the background, but they are actually surging and turning far uglier. The Family Research Council is a bed of daisies compared to major party candidates whipping crowds of Brownshirts into violent frenzies.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I hope Obama wins but the result is going to be angry hordes of violently angry white people, and Sarah Palin will be their mascot. Ugly days are ahead for all of us.
Fear the rhetoric that’ll surround the immigration debate in an Obama presidency. It’ll be a proxy for racial attacks that are beyond the pale for mainstream Republicans against Obama’s race.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Zach, can you tell me the time stamp for the “Kill him!” guy? I keep rewatching it and it’s hard to hear. I hear something that could be “Nail him!” or “Kill him!” and I can’t tell which.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
@Snow
I think you’re hearing the right thing. Like I said, it’s a big ambiguous. I thought he could be yelling “Palin!” but that wouldn’t make sense in this context, although just being a Palin supporter doesn’t make sense in any context. The Milbank article states that she called out Ayers for bombing the Pentagon, people booed, then someone yelled “Kill him!” That’s a few seconds later, and you can hear something that maybe matches that description but it’s inaudible. This video is from behind Palin, whereas Milbank was almost inevitably situated on the press risers that are generally a couple hundred feet in front of the speaker. There isn’t any audio available from that vantage point because the networks generally take a direct feed from the candidate’s mic making it hard to discern any specifics other than loud crowd noise. The McCain “Terrorist!” remark likely came from behind him since it was picked up so well on microphone. You can see a network feed of her speech here: http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=f040563f-d37b-4dfc-ac39-71b4c2086e04 … have to wait for the whole thing to load though.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
These people need to be defeated. Then we can decide which of them are criminally liable.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Whether or not there was more that didn’t get printed, boy is enough to qualify as a racial epithet.
Of course it is. But not all epithets are equally offensive, and the press is letting the fanatics off easy if they only print the *least* offensive of them.
We’ve all seen Southern politicians wriggle out of criticism when they’re caught using ‘boy’. But unfortunately that’s the worst anyone can challege the McCain camp to defend or denounce in this instance, because it’s the only slur that the press chose to record.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Regarding the video posted in comment 11: I think at 6:45 the muffled male voice is shouting “Nail him, nail him” not “Kill him, kill him”
October 7th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Regarding the video posted in comment 11: I think at 6:45 the muffled male voice is shouting “Nail him, nail him” not “Kill him, kill him”
Sounds about right to me; now Obama’s opponents treat him like Christ, too!
October 7th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Great day in the morning. (and yes I’m Southern). Can’t we have one – just one- election where everything said by a candidate is not either racist/right wing conspiracy or some communist/socialist plot? I know the blogs are partial but damn, some of us do not feel that the country will be ruined by either Obama or John. This Palin thing is starting to strike independents like me as insane – she’s just the VP candidiate – did you ever think the Repulicans weren’t going to figure out that nominating a conservative woman for President ot Vice President wasn’t going to make the far left’s head explode? Barack Obama is a good and honarable man and the smears against him are ridiculous, and John McCain was tortured and also a gooand honorable man(and lets be real, those yelling out “Republican” torture in Iraq have no idea what its like to spend 5 years in a POW prison).
Dammit, lets focus on the issues. No more “gotchas” or looking back on old issues like McCain’s “Keating 5″ or Obamas “preachers and Bill Ayers”. Just stop it, though I have no idea how.
October 8th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Really, some of you folks need to chill out, just as some of the hardcore rightwingers need to chill. As someone pointed out, conservatism taken to absurd extremes leads to Randy Weaver and Timothy McVeigh. The quote above is the opposite extreme. I think most of you understand this, but it is possible to have a different viewpoint on national policy and not be a “moral monster.”
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