Words have power

Or perhaps this post should be titled “No racist intent?”  The graphics described below are highly offensive, but a Google search will turn them up. 

• First came the Obama Waffles sold, supposedly as a gag, at the Values Voters Summit
• Next, there was the Virginia GOP mailer clearly designed to link Sen. Obama with terrorism
• And the admonition to Virginia volunteers to tie Obama to terrorism in the minds of voters as they canvassed for the McCain-Palin ticket
• Then the official website of the Sacramento County GOP with its graphic stating, “Waterboard Barack Obama”
• And finally the mailer sent out by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated with its obviously racist images.

Add to these the rhetoric describing Barack Obama as the “other,” as someone to be feared.  Palin continues to characterize her outrageous personal attacks on Barack Obama’s character as within bounds.  She has done nothing — either at her rallies or by means of a statement after the fact — to distance herself personally or the McCain campaign from remarks made by supporters, let alone to disavow such remarks. Last night McCain expressed pride in this supporters.

I well remember the turbulent days of the Civil Rights movement.  Emotions ran high.  I recall the words of people like Gov. George Wallace, of Lester Maddox, of Bull Connor and others. Fear and hatred spewed from them like lava from a volcano.  And too often those evil words spilled over into evil acts.  I well remember the murders that also characterized those times, from innocent children to individual volunteers to leaders of the movement and finally to the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fast forward some 20 years to 1985.  An Italian cruise ship was hijacked and an elderly passenger thrown overboard to his death.  Initial assumptions were that the PLO was responsible. Few Americans were aware of the nuances in Palestinian politics.  A Los Angeles TV station interviewed the west coast Regional Director of the Arab-American Antidiscrimination Committee (ADC), who tried to flesh out the range existing among Palestinian political factions. He was a friend of mine and I recognized immediately that his views were not accurately represented.  The following morning a bomb exploded as he opened his office door and he was killed, leaving a family and many friends.  A few days later, the entire, unedited interview was aired. But it was too late.  Words are powerful things, and they can be twisted, intentionally or otherwise, with catastrophic results.

Sarah Palin is too young to remember the civil rights struggle.  Perhaps she is naive. Perhaps she is not fully informed.  Perhaps she doesn’t realize that she is playing with fire.  John McCain was of age during that struggle.  He was alive while segregation was legal and during the struggle to overturn it.  He cannot be unaware of those times and of the violence that too often followed the venomous speech of those who sought to deny equality to African Americans.  He wasn’t in Congress then, so we don’t know whether he would have supported the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. 

John McCain is running to be President of the United States.  He has the responsibility to speak out forcefully when campaign rhetoric takes a potentially dangerous turn.  He has the responsibility to rein in his running mate. For it is ultimately he who is responsible for the tone of his campaign.  And should one of his ardent supporters resort to violence, he will bear some of that responsibility as well.

UPDATE: No sooner than I finished this post, I heard tape of a Palin appearance today (Oct. 16) in Elon, SC, in which she said this when security people tried to usher a protester out, “Maybe we need to tell security that maybe he need not go.  Maybe he needs to stay and learn a little bit from all of you.”  This after reports that a group of “old women” harassed and assaulted two young male Obama supporters at the Palin rally yesterday in Laconia, NH. The Boston Globe story indicates that the two had been disruptive and were ejected.  While that may well be true, the image of a group of 15 retirement age women beating up on a couple of young guys for cheering for Obama somehow doesn’t play too well, either.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2: And then there’s this…  And this.   To be fair, the former was in response to a yard display in which an Obama figure was shown alongside a McCain figure wearing Klan garb.  These are ill-considered responses by individual supporters, and both are inappropriate.  However, one cannot compare the tepid attempts of the McCain campaign to call out objectionable responses to the official pieces and statements by GOP organizations and McCain surrogates. 

An reader commented that I was being unfair by not calling attention to mis-deeds by Obama supporters.  Well, I just have.  To his credit Obama has on at least three separate occasions, called on supporters not to boo his opponent — once during the primaries and twice in recent rallies.  Obama demands that his supporters not boo.  How different is that from McCain and Palin ignoring people calling Obama a traitor and a terrorist at rallies, from people shouting “kill him, ” or “off with his head.”  There is no comparison, and to try to argue that such statements are acceptable civil discourse is unacceptable.