Thoughts on McCain/Palin “supporters”, racism and the worst run presidential campaign ever.

The last few months have been excruciating. Even though I am a terrible cynic, I still seem to be enough of an idealist that I end up being crushed when Republicans and conservatives throw away all pretense of playing fair and ethical. As a person who really believes in rational behavior and fact based logic, I am just astounded when I see "adults" act like spoiled twelve year olds who will throw tantrums when they don’t get want they want or think they can get away with outlandish lies and they won't get caught.

I was going to say something about the strange, sad case of Ashley Todd, the McCain campaign worker who came up with a pretty outlandish story of being assaulted by a “six foot four black man” who robbed her at knife point, carved a “B” (a backwards one, interestingly enough, like something one would do when looking in a mirror and not really think about what it is going to look like to someone else) into her cheek and told her that she would be an Obama supporter, all because this guy supposedly saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car. As everyone now knows, this story was a complete fabrication on her part.

Now, what bothers me about this is not that one psychologically troubled person can make up an absurd story for whatever reason. She probably honestly thought she would be helping the McCain campaign, plus she would be getting some media attention out of it as well. What she really needs, at this point, is some professonal help. And I don’t believe for a minute that McCain campaign, at the beginning, had anything to do with staging this. However, what I am extremely bothered by is how the right wing nut jobs (I’m talking about YOU, Drudge), including some local officials in the McCain campaign, latched on to this and pushed it in order to…. And that’s the rub. What exactly were they trying to accomplish? Scare the electorate about black men in general? The idea is that a big scary black guy is just waiting around every corner to jump out and accost young white women?

If that’s the idea behind all this, then these morons have just shown themselves for the racists they truly are. They have apparently dropped trying to relive the 1960’s. They have traveled further back in time to the 1930’s and 40’s, where all one had to do was accuse a black man of anything, and everyone, including law enforcement, automatically assumed the guy was guilty. No real evidence was needed. More often than not, the accused was grabbed out of his home, hogtied and then lynched. That seems to be the images these racist a**holes were trying to conjure up by pushing this story.

Fox News seemed very interested in pushing this. From a story at HuffPo:

Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

This is just extremely bizarre logic, if one could even refer to it as logic. Even if this were true, why would a single attack on a McCain worker, regardless of how horrendous it was, make Obama supporters suddenly “feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee?” What has that got to do with anything? I certainly never saw Fox News say anything of the sort about the reported violence against reporters and Obama supporters at Sarah Palin rallies. To Fox News, those alleged incidents (even though a number are on video) are something beneath notice. But one attack on a McCain (white female) worker by a (scary black) Obama supporter is somehow supposed to alter the thinking patterns of a nation? And this guy is an executive vice-president of the network!?! And now that this ridiculous story has been shown to be a complete fabrication, with Todd facing some punishment over giving false statements to law enforcement officials, where is Drudge? Where is Fox News? Where are the McCain campaign officials who pushed this story to the media? Are we going to hear any apologies, heartfelt or otherwise? No, probably not. That’s not the wingnuts’ style. Just go on to the next big “story” and pretend that the last one never existed… That’s how Republicans and conservatives operate these days.

Truly, I do not understand how these people can live with themselves. Yes, I desperately want the Democrats, MY team, to win this election. I cannot stand what the power mad crooks and thugs have done to this country in the last eight years. But I would never think about stooping to the depths that these people do, on an every day basis, to try to achieve those goals.

“Repugnant” doesn’t even come close.