shelbinator.com

Updated with video below!

There were many reasons I loved supporting Joe Biden. Among them was the fact that I have a tendency to speak my mind before I know it’s a good idea, and I admire that in a politician. Sometimes I’ll get really riled up and start talking trash, but then someone will call me on my attitude, and I’m sorry I have to put my money where my mouth is.

I would have been indignant, righteous, nay furious in the 1960s about civil rights. But I think when the po-po showed up with billy clubs, I mighta gone runnin’ home to momma. Not Rep. John Lewis, he got his skull cracked for the right to vote. So he knows a thing or two about hostile environments.

God forbid he denounce the general air of hostility being fomented in the final throes of the McCain campaign, as people scream “Kill him!” and “Terrorist!” from the audience as Gov. Sarah Palin reminds us over and over again of his Otherness, and Sen. McCain only counters the mob once when he accidentally gives the microphone to two xenophobes at one rally.

George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better.
[emphasis mine]

Naturally, Sen. McCain’s reaction is to get upset with Rep. Lewis and call his remarks “outrageous,” “unacceptable,” “brazen and baseless.” Oh, and of course to call on Barack Obama — who had nothing to do with it — to repudiate Lewis’s remarks (not like that would do him any more good than his repudiation of Rev. Wright’s remarks or Bill Ayers’s domestic terrorism).

McCain cannot even for a second acknowledge the (perhaps unintended) consequences of his campaign’s strategy of fomenting fear about Obama, and he blames the messenger for trying to bring him back into the light. What the heck do you think is going to come of a campaign based on constantly stoking fear through vague but threatening comments about a candidate’s loyalty to the American way of life? What on earth are you doing even going on stage after some nut pastor opens your rally with an invocation like this?

There are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that [McCain’s] opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.

These are the kinds of people John McCain “pals around with.” Totally acceptable, yes?

But no, it’s Lewis who’s out of line for suggesting caution. It’s like the same irrational anger you get from an alcoholic when you tell them they drink too much. How dare you accuse them of such a thing!

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, as they say.

Tonight, that bastion of East Coast liberal media elitism CNN showed some video their correspondent Gary Tuchman collected while talking (calmly and rationally) to supporters at a McCain-Palin rally about their beliefs that Obama is a terrorist, a Muslim, a one-man sleeper cell, and various other brilliance. I hope they put it online so I can embed it here for posterity.

Oh, here it is!