Tuesday political links

I have the flu, so I will just throw a few links your way and then go crawl back into bed.

The presidential campaign is starting to see some ugly racism coming to the surface. At GOP rallies, there are reports of people calling Obama a terrorist, and yelling that someone should kill him. You can read about it on: The Washington Post; Feministing and the Huffington Post. You can also google it and read about it on the news source of your choice.

And what is McCain doing about it? Well, a few times he spoke out about it at his rallies, which seems real big...until you realize that he's training his volunteers to explicitly accuse Obama of terrorism. Palin, too, is creating enormous problems by saying that the crowds to whom she speaks "see America as a force for good in this world" while Mr. Obama "sees America ... as so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country". It's pretty obvious that we should see Obama as not "one of us," "someone who hangs out with terrorists", someone who is probably Muslim...they're not even trying to run against his positions, but are simply trying to paint him as someone who is evil and other and scary. And this is problematic not only because they are trying to stir up racial anger against Obama, but because they are reinforcing the terrible idea that there's something wrong with being non-white and/or Muslim. I'm not the only person who's scared that this could lead to some serious violence, and that the McCain/Palin campaign will bear some responsibility if it does.