::::::::
As the McCain/Palin campaign gets uglier, so do the crowds at their rallies. Stoked by what the Associated Press called "racially tinged" attacks on Barack Obama particularly from Sarah Palin, by Republican anger at Obama's surge toward victory, and probably by their own deep-seated bigotry, the crowds at McCain/Palin events have begun expressing their Obama hatred in increasingly disturbing terms.
As eyewitness Dana Milbank observes in the Washington Post, Palin's line of attack on Obama at an Oct. 6 rally in Clearwater, Florida, prompted one man to shout, "Kill him!" (a secret service investigation is currently underway in response to this incident, which is hardly good press for the campaign). Others at McCain/Palin events have shouted "treason" and even "terrorist!" at the mention of Obama's name, as the Huffington Post discusses in detail. At the Clearwater event, as Dana Milbank observes, Palin's media-bashing likewise produced a hateful response from the crowd, who turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse while others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial slur at an African American sound man and told him, "Sit down, boy" (see also ABC News).
Of course none of this looks good for the McCain/Palin campaign, which is coming increasingly to resemble a lynch mob.
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
