chicagodads

I’ve been railing for the last week or two about how uncivil the political discourse has gotten as of late and how it terrifies me that two great men who would be president of the US are resorting to middle school tactics and talking down to the American people. I’m quite a bit frightened of these angry mobs being incited to racial and intellectual violence - none of which I want my children to inherit. (You can scroll through this blog or my sister site, Leftcheek , for more of what I wrote. Or, you can read Frank Rich’s insight here [of course, I write better].)

Happily, this all came to a halt when, sensing the tipping point in his own campaign, McCain defended the decency and humanity of his opponent. Things are so much better now. Can you smell the flowers blooming? That’s love in the air between decent men. Now they can concentrate on policy differences in a respectable manner because the McCain campaign has thrown the wrench in the hate machine.

Or did it?

His declaration that Obama was not someone to be afraid of, after all, was greeted by boos from his own supporters in the audience. Though many people in attendance applauded his call for dignity and respect to resume, still there were pitbulls out looking for blood and upset that McCain would impede their lynch mob.

This morning, though, Obama thanked McCain for defending him and doing the right thing. However, John Lewis - living Civil Rights Icon and a man whom McCain called wise - didn’t get the memo. He said that the Republican ticket is “playing with [a] fire… [that may] consume us all” and he recalled the fatal and epic consequences of George Wallace’s dire incendiary politics.

McCain, once again, took it personally. And so he called on Obama - again in a way that I interpret to be patricional - to “repudiate” (why does Obama always have to ‘repudiate’ the claims of other black men that are not speaking for him? And why isn’t McCain repudiating the claims of a white woman is specifically is speaking for him? Or a sheriff who speaks for him? Or, say, Fox News, who brings in an anti-Semite with no evidence to make some sh*t up about Barack and ACORN just because they’ve both worked in ‘community development’? Oh, and they’re both connected to the evil big city - what with all of its urban poor and dark-skinned and foreigners that you just can’t trust, doggone it) this comparison. Not, by the way, before his campaign said that they would effectively continue with the mudslinging because America needs to find out who this shady Barack Obama really is.

And so, I’m back to sad…

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