A Protester Displays His Fear of Obama
An anti-Obama guy with a protest sign at a recent rally put the whole race into perspective for me, but it had nothing to do with his sign, and everything to do with his face, and with the faces of those who challenged him.
I was reading the ANP story about this protester at an Obama rally who was confronted, very peacefully, by folks at the rally who wanted to know what his sign, which seemed to be yet another Muslim slam, "meant."
The sign was really irrelevant. Watch the video below. Look at him. Look at his face, his manner.
The guy is really terrified. At first pass, I thought it might be that he was getting a little freaked out by being confronted by several very unhappy Muslims, but when I go back to the beginning, he just has this look of fear that says a lot about where other white Americans, who are less inclined to feel the urge to protest, are feeling right now.
His face speaks volumes to why, when papers are endorsing Obama at simply astounding ratios, and 59% of the country apparently thinks that Sarah Palin is not fit to be President should that be necessary, we have a race that continues to tighten.
As the majority of the United States voting population is waking up and searching for those poll-standing shoes for Tuesday, there comes the realization:
'Hey, the black guy might actually win.'
It is enough to turn Pat Boone as white as his shoes.
As much as I wholly and completely disagree with the protester's message, I have to marvel a bit at his courage. Dems have kids and women who bust into Palin rallies so they can protest and be escorted out. They have this agenda or that to grind on specific issues that they feel Palin does not fairly represent. They may think that she's not qualified, and they make their feelings known.
None of them, though, are there because she is white, or because she is a woman. While they may be out there, I have yet to see someone clutching a sign with a shot of Sarah Palin from her church speaking in tongues, or displaying her alongside the Alaska secessionists.
Here is this guy out there with his goofy hat and sign, ready to take on the world -- sort of -- because he is genuinely terrified of a black "Muslim" man in the White House. He keeps repeating:
"It's not the right time."
As if some time for him, and those like him, is ever going to be right.
I was also impressed with those who challenged our demonstrator. They were clearly angry, but they showed reserve, and respect.
It made me think that, even if Obama does not win on Tuesday, he has changed politics in America, and for the better; that those who want to see someone bring prosperity back to the whole country, not just its elites, have the support of people who are strong, and resolved to change their world vocally, yet peacefully.
Step back from the political muck with me for a minute, and freeze frame this moment, and you have a crystallization of this election cycle:
We are facing staggering times that require a solid, confident, forward-thinking leader. Time and again, to anyone calm and rational, Barack Obama has demonstrated those traits. Heck, he even talked down Rachael Maddow with a pleasant smile after hours and hours on his game at dozens of rallies and meets over the prior 48 hours.
John McCain has vacillated, waffled, flip-flopped, lied, misrepresented, shaded, and vastly distorted the facts in ways that anyone from the diligent FactCheck.org, to the average guy on the street who isn't scared of black people, seems to get.
McCain screams and rants about how he is going to clean up the mess that his party made over the last twenty-odd years, but everyone working for him are the mess-makers.
He talks about his own populist drive, yet he is busing in kids to fill in crowds, and hiring temps to canvass because, in spite of their vocal screaming, he does not have enough supporters to canvass or even rip up Obama road signs. Don't tell Lou Dobbs, but I actually saw some nice day laborers doing that here in Boca Raton, Florida, at night, with a beat-up pick-up truck.
His biggest command decision was to bring aboard a first mate, Sarah Palin, who is nice eye-candy, but who is hopelessly clueless when it comes to anything from telling you what her favorite newspaper is to even the most rudimentary foreign policy questions.
She reads a teleprompter well, but Bible Spice, as Alec Baldwin so aptly dubber her, is not a qualified person to be sitting in the Oval Office.
So we have this problem: If Barack Obama was "the white guy" would our friend there with his poster be out there with the anti-Muslim mask for anti-black thinking? No.
Would the Dems be able to bat back the vast media machine that powers up the Republican attack machine that is crippled by two decades of its corrupt and morally bankrupt fiscal policy coming down around its ears? Yes.
Our race has come down to two things that no amount of rational reason will resolve: Which is the United States of America more afraid of -- the economy failing, or the White House being occupied by a black man?
I guess that we'll find out on Tuesday.
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I'm sure if a person was outside a McCain rally with a sign that accused him as being a secret member of the KKK, it would be a whole 'nother story.
exactly...
Me too. And I didn't see much 'reserve' or 'respect' in those who 'challenged the demonstrator'. Why challenge him at all? That kind of mob attack would have freaked me too. I'm sure his convictions were redoubled: that the Muslims were indeed out to get him.
The most reasonable response was from the guy who asked: Why should that matter in the USA? We've got freedom of religion.
the republicans are all paranoid delusional ... would not want to smoke pot with these guys ...
Wait, wait, wait. Nobody "attacked" the guy in the goofy hat. He was not censored, he was not dragged into the alley, he was not assaulted. The police did not get involved. The government did not get involved.
What happened was that one citizen exercised his right to freely express his opinon, however unclearly, and other citizens freely exercised their right to freely express their opinions. Nothing bad happened here. The right to free speech does not include immunity from non-violent challenge. If one says something dumb, false, or outrageous, one must expect to be challenged on it.
Why challenge him, you ask? Why not challenge him? That's what we call a political dialog.
And why do you assume, and why do you think he assumed, that his interlocutors were Muslims? Chances are, they were ordinary Christian Americans who were engaged by his message and sought to debate it.
An unfortunate placing of the Newsweek promo - "The God who wasn't there" - next to the "Mama voted for Obama" ad.
With a story about a protester at an Obama rally, expressing his right of free speech, whether you agree with his viewpoint or not, this is a bad placement. The story expresses the paranoia of segments of our citizenry of having a black man as president and then possibly offends another segment with the ad placement
For the truly paranoid this would be guilt by location association. How about a little discretion?
The ads are placed by an ad firm that has no idea what is sitting on the page, but place ads instead based upon the general content. No way Huff or the ad company would know.
Use Firefox with Add block and Flash Block. Never see another banner add or screaming flash advertisment or dancing fool add again.
First off let me preface this by saying I am a long, long time supporter of Obama....have been supporting him before a lot of people knew who he was......
I want to say that this protester has the right to his freedom of speech without having to justify his views to anyone. I think the fear you see in his eyes is the same fear you see in any person's eyes who face a mob.
Barack has run his campaign without stooping to the negative attacks on his opponents that we are used to and thus has possibly become the most transformational candidate in the history of politics.
It will be too bad some his supporters are not able to follow in his footsteps and allow others to share their views, no matter how outrageous...to practice free speech, without the lynch mob mentality we see displayed in this video.
I am a little sickened by it already.
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