Things from the campaign trail keep getting uglier. Here is what went down at a rally in Davenport, Iowa TODAY:
At a McCain event, as the crowd waited for McCain himself to arrive, Pastor Arnold Conrad of the Grace Evangelical Free Church of Davenport, Iowa, gave an invocation that included the following: “I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god–whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah–that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will 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 with all that happens between now and Election Day.” [Link]
First of all, even the hate speech itself demonstrates gross ignorance. For goodness sake, if you are going to be a bigot at least have the courtesy to be a bigot that makes sense. “Hindu” and “Buddha” aren’t gods. Millions of people don’t worship “Hindu.” Furthermore, all three of the Abrahamic religions worship the same God, Muslims just call him Allah. Geez, can anyone just sign up to be a pastor? This was the invocation that started off the rally before McCain even arrived. I guess they wanted to get the crowd in the mood.
Update: Video is now up (thanks to commenter “baplog”)
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Here was the McCain campaign’s official response:
McCain Iowa spokeswoman Wendy Rieman: “While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.” [link]
Yes, we wouldn’t want to distract from real issues. Right.
Where is there really to go from there?
ABC News’ Imtiyaz Delawala, traveling with Palin, reports that a Palin supporter in Johnstown, Pa., today was holding a Curious George monkey doll on which he’d put an Obama sticker. [Link]
If I was Delawala I’d ask for a bodyguard while reporting. All of this is increasingly troubling. After the attacks on September 11th there was a backlash that included violence against anyone perceived to be a Muslim. Should we be worrying about the same thing if Obama should win?
Update: Frank Rich of the NYTimes breaks it down.
YES thats exactly what will happen…be very worried..If Obama wins anyone with a skin tone darker than milk chocolate better run for the hills..cause you are going to get whacked! Thank you sepia mutiny for the warning..and saving us all…
McCain is not supposed to win. Besides being A Democrat or RINO, I believe that he was nominated so Hussian Obama could become president.
After Hussian Obama becomes President there will be a swing to the right. (like Jimmah Carter enabling REAGAN)
Wait, Obama went to http://www.hussianart.edu/ ? Please spell for me reagan’s first name.. ronaldinho reagan was it?
43 · Manju said
Well, with the way McCain is jumping off the team wagon with all his, “g-ddamit woman, you’re killing me wit this he’s a furriner crap!” he couldn’t even get linked at redstate. Remember, if you’re not with the facetious incitement team program(and write at that liberal elitist site culture11), you’re against it.
right now, the entire conservative blogosphere sees Palin as possessing at least 3x McCain’s manhood complement–wanting to go after Wright, publicly undermining the campaign by wondering why they’re not doing so, pounding the Ayers angle without McCain’s pleas for giving the “Ay-rab” a chance. Even after seeing the strongsville and bethlehem videos, how many Republican base voters in those states would say, “so??” (yes, obama’s base were susceptible to some pretty sexist HRC bashing from their lowest-common-denominator base but I can’t recall seeing any popular reaction to it that involved threats of violence.) Will Savage’s ratings go up at the expense of Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity?
48 · daycruz said
I think the point was already made–it’s not secular bigotry but belief. Though how, “you’re not saved, therefore, after death, you’re going to a place I regard to be the worst of all possible destinations” is any better than, “Our God will be pleased by his true believers’ show of electoral force” I can’t really tell.
There’s virulent hate on both sides. Lets not forget ‘Reverend’ Wright and ‘Reverend’ Flagler who openly say a lot more hateful stuff. The difference is that Obama was close to these guys. There is no racial connotation with linking Ayers to Obama. The guy is a terrorist and Obama launched his political career in his living room. It the dirty secret, but its the truth. Its not dirty politics to bring the truth out. Its the same analogy as blaming the messenger.
That said, we have terrible candidates to choose from when country is in a recession. One is a black Marxist who hasn’t accomplished anything as Bill Clinton said in his stumping for Hillary,and other is probably the lesser of two evils. Perhaps that is one of the reason why markets are tanking so badly.
56 · Vic said
take your fear of black people elsewhere.
Typical…throwing racist accusation around when you can’t deal with facts. I don’t see you walking in middle of Detroit at night. Hypocrite.
Vic,
Try reading the post, the comments and keeping up with the news. This is not a “one side says…but the other side says” issue. No obama/biden campaign stops feature attendees expressing a desire to kill protesters and opposing candidates. None feature warm-up speakers, or questioners, who question the other candidate’s ability to lead based on phrenology.
The reason you don’t see me walking anywhere is because you’re sitting at home, high on cheeto-dust no doubt, and pissing yourself at the prospect of black marxists breaking down the door and controlling the means of production. It’s an unenviable situation I hope you are able to escape in the future.
I guess this does answer my question. Savage is ascendant!
Vic, seriously?? The type of bigotry in your comments is exactly what this post is against.
Video is up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g0d3_KE5js
How different is this from the prelude to Godhra or Babri?
And this is a civilized nation? A tolerant nation?
linky
wonder if America is ready for a black president, or will it show the true racial legacy of the icemans inheritance
The guy carrying the monkey in this video before he enters the rally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKUovpF9LWU
56 · Vic said
They didn’t give you the secret decoder ring? “Terrorist” = America Hater / Muslim / Bad Other “Reverend Wright” = “bad” Black (and btw, if you’ve never thought “God Damn America” in your life, then there’s a problem.) I have no idea who Reverend Flagler is.
The point is not whether or not you raise perfectly legitimate issues like Obama’s ties to Ayers (which are fairly minimal, but yes, Ayers did fundraise for him) but how you understand them and place them in context. Or: Yelling fire when there’es a fire and yelling fire when you’re in a crowded theatre are two different things.
Does anyone think Obama is a radical terorrist? Does anyone think Obama is a Black nationalist? Does anyone think that Obama stands for the same things as these people are being used to invoke? if you do, you’re not understanding Obama or the current climate very well – probably willfully because it’s from so far out of rightfield that it.
On the other hand, when you’re down 6-10 points in an election, enough to come close to guaranteeing that you’re goinig to lose, and your party (and others) have been tossing out coded messages like “states rights” and “we wouldn’t have had all these problems for so many years” and “McCain has an illegitimate Black baby” or “welfare queens” for forty years, and you speak to an audience of profoundly unhappy and angry people in an economic and political climate in which people are profoundly unhappy and angry and they start saying things that are quite frightening, to say or do nothing is illegitimate and irresponsible.
Even McCain and non-populist Republicans know this, which is why he and they finally said something, but not nearly enough. I think they’re not quite ready to disavow the entire strategy on which their class politics rests.
13 · baplog said
NOT SURE
McCain’s tactics have blown up in his face. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. This is not 1965 America, just after the Watts riots. Things have changed. Even the “crime” line tabled above by some bow-tied housies doesn’t have the same resonance, because crime is way down nationally.
Where does he go now? Abortion? Pfft. He’s looking very tired, which makes him all the more erratic.
x2
This last month has solidified my position that neither candidates are truly capable of being good executives (not that the outgoing president was, either). For things to be good, they have to be bad as well (ying-yang stuff). The country’s DNA needs a little cleansing, while it’s sad that things have to get really bad for them to clean house and improve, the half glass full optimist in myself thinks that if both political parties continue to muck it up , just maybe the type of real out of the box thinking that’s needed may show up in DC. One thing is for sure, Barack Obama nor John McCain aren’t the answers. As parties, both continue to fail the public with the same old rhetoric.
From a TIME Magazine reporter today:
gujudude,
what do you do when you encounter statements like Vic’s, where he says a few bigoted things and then one true thing, in public/social situations? Do you change the direction of the conversation so it trends toward the argument that the two-party system gives us something less than 2 quality choices? It’s not like they would be able to engage solely in reasonable criticisms (i.e. ACORN is overloading inefficient state officials with a flurry of applications at the last minute and not scheming to insert their secret agent into the white house) I’m not ready to, RP-style, laud the conspiracy theorist for their small-gov’t inclinations and turn a blind eye to the rank bigotry.
Same guy has second thoughts when he is caught on camera again and peels off the Obama sticker and creepily passes the monkey to a kid.
Esqire “endores” Obama for Pres From the article:
Left,right and center-some people are really niave about America and where “we”- The American voting public is, as a whole,in regard to religion, as well as tolerance to change. I’ve sent in my absentee ballot a few days ago, Go Obama!!- yet, while my pan European co-workers engage in conversations about the US election, (when not watching the meltdown),I keep my own council. There is indeed a ‘fierce urgency to now’ and I don’t mean race ,inclusiveness etc. I’m speaking of temperament, competence,a more apt world view, as well as acknowledgement that some things have gone very wrong- and misplaced scapegoats are not the way forward.
However the “change” has to be grounded in present day reality. “Man shot three times for wearing an Obama T-Shirt”- in London, England not Appalachia. All that to say, fundamental changes to any societydoes not happen in a vacumm,nor overnight.
I’m prouder I’ve always been proud ;-), when Americans of all stripes call out the Xenophobia, base elements etc that some feel a need to pander to.
Yeah, I watched that earlier today also! That has got to be one of the most interesting video clips I have ever seen.
47 · razib said
very true. that obama’s candidacy would bring out latent racism in the electorate was quite predictable. that a black man could seize the nomination and be in a position to take the prsidency via a landslide was not. if you were an historian, which would be the major theme?
and then there’s his name. now, i never thought his race would prevent him form getting this far, but i didn’t know how to measure the effect of his name. i mean you don’t see joe hitler staleen running for the presidency of poland do you?
face it, a year ago, most of you were closer to dmx than you’d like to admit (though his last sentance appears eerily wise and prescient in hindsight) :
XXL: You’re not? You know there’s a black guy running, Barack Obama, and then there’s Hillary Clinton. DMX: His name is Barack?!
XXL: Barack Obama, yeah. DMX: Barack?!…What the f*ck is Barack?! Barack Obama. Where is he from, Africa?
XXL: Yeah, his dad is from Kenya. DMX: Barack Obama?…What the fck?! That ain’t no fckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that ngga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fck outta here.
XXL: I mean, it’s pretty big if a black… DMX: Wow, Barack! The ngga’s name is Barack. Barack? Ngga named Barack Obama. What the fck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fckin’ name. Ima tell this ngga when I see him, ‘Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit. That ain’t your fckin name. Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.’
XXL: But it would be pretty big if we had a first black president. That would be huge. DMX: I mean, I guess…What, they gonna give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fcked this shit up then give it to the black people, ‘Here, you take it. Take my mess.’
I foresee a rush for OCI cards.
Just to complicate things even further, Barack is a Jewish name.
exaclty Manuju. Model minorities who IBank with perfect credit while being the new jews to save us from us from the housing crisis,while being held back due to affirmative action might have to re-calibrate a bit
I must give it to Wolf Blitzer – this morning he said that McCain should have first said (to the ed T-Shirt Arab-hater) is : First of , there is nothing wrong with Arabs….
Of the two, who could do this?
This is not a shock, in fact, it only legitimizes what we already know….Lots of groups that organize under the banner of religion and specifically religious nationalism want a Republican victory because it better serves their economic, caste, race and nationalist interests in their own local spaces, the speaker is a case in point. Hindutva( BJP, RSS, etc.)is another perfect example. Hindutva and the Republican Party are not opposing entities at all. That statement in fact shows solidarity with other exploitative religious nationalist regimes, not other “common” hindus, buddhists and muslims. When I see politicians show their support for religious diversity in the context of multiculturalism it reduces all issues to a tolerance for other religions: as if they are showing support for individuals who are freely practicing. That’s not the case at all – they are double speaking, strategizing.
79 · Neale said
actuallly, mccains response makes sense if the woman said “arab terrorist.”
I’d be happier and feel more comfortable about the state of racism in this country if McCain/Palin were down a lot more than 6 – 10 points. These are all youngish people, too, not about to fall off the perch.
All 50 state treasuries are failing to raise the billions needed just to keep functioning and pay the wages
just as we are finding interesting things like this…
Why isn’t God intervening yet?
55 · Nayagan said
It’s far better. I would much rather take the threat of a McCain presidency in a non-existent afterlife than in 2009.
83 · Amrita said
the best metric i can think off for measuring the effect of racism on the election is to compare obama’s numbers to a generic democrat, which reveals he’s been consistently behind by about 4ish points. there could be other factors in play of course, mccain’s theoretically stronger than a generic repub, obama theoretically less experienced,etc…but i’d have to assume race is the biggest factor.
then add to that the Bradley effect, if it exists at all, and you have some ballpark figure to get your head around.
72 · nil said
That is odd. What happened to him between video 1 and 2? At first he’s practically shoving the monkey into the camera, holding it like a trophy and waiving it around. By video 2 he looks like he just got caught masturbating. what accounts for this sudden progress? i mean, technically it is progress, no?
I think you could write a whole paper on this. Here is my hypothesis:
He comes from a more homogeneous community, one where the sentiments he expresses are common or fall within the acceptable “norm.” His first indication that his behavior might not be acceptable is where protesters across the street in the first clip start yelling “racist” at him. When most people get accused of something they either get initially angry, or play the demon and do it even more for the attention. Then it begins to set in that he is no longer in a group where his behavior is within the norm. The camera itself is such a powerful instrument. In the second clip guilt and then a bit of panic seem to set in. Its like he is going through the stages of understanding almost like a little kid.
Manju, the first video was taken by some random person on the street, the second video was taken by a news crew.
I love the arrogance on this guy, thinking that he can intimidate the Almighty. You can imagine God, out of shape, half-asleep on the couch in His dark and messy apartment at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon, covered in potato chip crumbs and crumpled-up soda cans, suddenly startling Himself awake:
“Holy crap, Pastor Jack Assington is right! I gotta get My **** together or else the Ay-rabs are gonna have a field day!”
cue Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and montage of God drinking raw eggs, doing sit ups, jumping rope, etc.
“Furthermore, all three of the Abrahamic religions worship the same God,”
This is true in only the most diplomatic manner of speaking, and it is otherwise a fiction that does not really aid in the understanding of these belief systems.
Unbelievable.
And is it just me or are these “town hall meetings” starting to take on an eerie resemblance to Klan rallies?
If you think that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship three different Gods then it is you that don’t understand the beliefs systems (or rather their origins).
i eagerly await the mccain camp’s angry press release about blacks fanning the flames of racism by looking like monkeys and inviting these comparisons.
also, did that rove-looking philly racist contribute to the obama campaign by buying that sticker?
66 · Dr Amonymous said
it is worse than that. there is a significant part of the republican party that looks up to palin with great admiration and hope for the future.
Agree. It is akin to asking if Catholics and Protestants worship the same God.
95 · i had a dream said
aware. From Twitter:
71 · Nayagan said
Nayagan,
Comments should be dissected, as it is being done here. I haven’t read all comments and didn’t feel the need to dogpile on when you and Abhi have clearly stated what needed to be said. I actually quoted that part from your response and didn’t even address the rest due the reason just stated.
I’m not trying to change the direction of a conversation or stopping anyone from calling out BS where they see it. My statement was what it was, nothing more, nothing less. If you think otherwise, you’re looking too far into it. I’ve been pretty consistent in my displeasure with the current state of the two party system.
But if it’s a requirement that I must join everyone here in saying racist comments are not welcome, you can count me in, didn’t know it was mandatory though when commenting. I felt like commenting on that specific part of the statement and I did, within the bounds of the rules set here.
83 · Amrita said
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Likewise. Now consider that if the financial crisis had taken a month or so more, McCain would still be winning and might have even won the election. And that the bulk of Americans don’t know or acknowledge that their country is imperialist and destroys countless lives on a daily basis.
But to quote a famous idiot, you go to war with the society you have, not the society you want. Takes work over the long haul in the U.S. to remediate 40 years of pro-rich, anti-union, bigoted policies and strategies and wars. And it’s already started in earnest, at least on some fronts – really we should be celebrating the first President of Color – even as we’re afraid for his life.
You mean he wasn’t trying to promote Hindu-Buddah-Allah unity with that invocation??
Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai, McCain-Palin bye bye.