The more Obama is tested, the more he shows his presidential mettle
Where were you when Obama was shot? The line we pray we will never have to say. A line that I have hesitated even to write, as if the mere inscribing of the words could invite calamity. Yet the fear preys on the back of our minds, as we see Barack Obama plunging into those crowds. I have now watched weeks of election coverage on the 24/7 television news channels in the United States, in the course of which every tiniest feature of the campaign has been examined to exhaustion, but not once have I heard this mentioned. Yet almost every day I have a private conversation in which the subject comes up, especially when talking to journalists.
Is this self-censorship of the media right? Should I not even be writing this? There are unstable, suggestible people out there. Experts may argue about the psychological impact of media coverage of such subjects, but it clearly has some. Earlier this year, a blogger pointed out that "assassinate Obama" had that day appeared on a list of Google's top 100 search items.
She suggested that newspaper stories about the danger had increased the number of such Google searches - and that her own blog might do the same. As may this column.
Yet to ignore this subject completely, never to mention in print what so many are thinking, is to miss something important. Only against this dark background of dread can you appreciate the full irresponsibility of the turn the McCain-Palin campaign has taken towards attacking Obama's character, biography and patriotism - attacks which, in other contexts, we would not hesitate to describe as "character assassination". The charge made by Sarah Palin that he has been "palling around with terrorists"; the automated calls associating him with "domestic terrorist" William Ayers; the underhand insinuation that he is alien, un-, or even anti-American; rhyming Obama with Osama; the absence of instant rebuke when some idiot at a Palin rally cries out "terrorist!" or even "kill him!".
for the record I have felt this regular guardian writer to be dubious in the extreme, the CIA pipe runs straight out his mouth, his is a more sophisticated version though, kinda post-modern. Fact of the matter is these murderous thugs have no compunction to telling us exactly what they intend to do. Warning to the wise, gird your loins, it's going to be a ruff ride.
"The question aint who killed JFK, but where are they now?"
~Jello Biafra
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