Teacher tells student Obama will be killed. Only gets suspended?
17 November 2008
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2 Comments
Here we go. The death threats have already increased, the hatred is flowing freely and now teachers are allowed to make hateful statements without being fired. I, in some part, still blame Senator McCain and Governor Palin for fanning the fires of racism at their campaign rallies. The secret service has now acknowledged that credible threats to Senator Obama increased 3-fold immediately following Governor Palin’s attempts to label President Elect Obama as a terrorist. I hope the punishments get a lot more severe for people who engage in this type of hate mongoring. If not, I fear that people will be empowered to continue.
It is sad how easily and far the measure of threat can slide depending on the subject. Between students in Idaho ‘innocently’ chanting for his assasination on a school bus or this type of rhetoric being dismissed so quickly (not to mention the prevented incident in Colorado that had none of the hallmarks of a meth deal and many of the hallmarks of a serious nutjob with serious intent. body armor, etc…) it is hard to take claims of family values too seriously. And that has been the drumbeat mantra of the right for a dozen or so years. Conveniently defined with the same lack of clarity as the ‘victory’ Obama wants to prevent by ‘legislating defeat’ or ‘legislating from the bench’ or whatever sound byte tested well with the focus groups.
Some of the blame has to lie with the never ending stream of hate radio.I don’t mean Andy Reid should be fired for that crap type of hate or the type of hate directed at Howard Eskin because… well just because he is Howard Eskin. I mean the type of ceaseless hinting references to “the Real America” or “That one” or the outright claims of Manchurian Candidate or that Obama will call for martial law and take away everybody’s guns and Pabst. That type of message, albeit in a slightly more vitriolic manner, helped bring about the start of Rwanda’s massacres. Listening to the radio on a cross country drive I wanted to check out the sounds and see how well the Simpsons painted the picture. After about 15 minutes of listening to what I assumed what part parody and part Lyndon Larouche propaganda I found out that I was in fact listening to the NEWS. The talk essentially centered around the left being Godless and evil and the right being the protectorate of the goodly Christian masses. And Rush Groove Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Joe “I have no idea how my intern ended up dead at my desk but I am now retiring from politics” Scarborough add more fuel to the fire every day.
The hijacking of the terms ‘faith’ and ‘values’ and all that they implicitly suggest by the GOP has caused much deep injury to America and sadly that will be seen more and more as those who invested their votes in republican promises find themselves jobless, pensionless, uninsured and looking for a convenient person to blame. And what is more convenient than tried and true stereotypes and dogwhistle racism?
I agree with you Bill and the child along with parent who were righfully outraged at such terrible comments. I also challenge WURD hosts to discourage any assasination rhetoric by callers or hosts who never supported Obama on Wurd. We too, have to take responsibility for the safty and well being of our president Obama among our circle of firends just by monitering desruptive gossip. I say this because I over-heard some back and forth comments by a host and caller several months ago concerrning this same matter. And yes the host made the same statement concerning Obama if elected president. Lets try and work together…
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