New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently attracted major attention when he dramatically warned, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi had done earlier, that malicious words can lead to life-threatening violence. Yet both were silent about the wave of political violence that reached its peak a year ago this month in a series of crimes that were not deemed especially newsworthy, because they were committed by supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama.
How many of us remember the McCain-Palin campaign bus coming under gunfire in New Mexico last October? Through sheer luck, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone else was harmed by the bullet that shattered a window of the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express. (For anyone who might argue that this was an insignificant crime, it's worth noting that the recent shooting of a moving bus with a BB or pellet-not an actual bullet-is being treated as attempted murder.)
Who remembers that the home of a Republican headquarters manager in central Florida was shot up that same week? Or the Molotov cocktail throwing, the cutting of McCain supporters' cars' brake lines, and other acts of vicious vandalism?.....
Feminists remained silent, as did the media, and did not seem to mind when vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was hanged in effigy in California.
The vilification of Palin, based largely on bigotry against her religion, reached its chilling logical conclusion when someone set fire to her church with women and children inside.
Although virtually no one in the media highlighted this crime's significance as attempted murder, it's no accident that anti-Palin vitriol-typified by former Air America radio-show host/actress Janeane Garofolo's comment that Palin "represents that lesser segment of the country" -- is reminiscent of white supremacists' characterizations of African-Americans as loathsome inferior beings. Such hate speech indeed breeds violence, as Pelosi and Friedman belatedly warn us. The Wasilla church arson of 2008 was a terrorist act as predictable, and as evil in intent, as the Birmingham church bombing of 1963.Speaking of inflammatory rhetoric, it was candidate Obama who urged followers in June 2008, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" (and he wasn't describing his policy toward Iran). Even though Obama's rallying cry was metaphorical, it nevertheless had the potential to incite a few unstable supporters, and it is difficult to imagine any other presidential candidate not being excoriated for the violent imagery (as Obama said during the campaign, "Don't tell me words don't matter"). Had McCain, Palin, or even Hillary Clinton, a Democrat not preferred by the media, made the same remark, it would have marked the first day of the Gun-gate controversy, which would have included demands to withdraw from the race. And if "bring a gun" were followed by actual shootings by supporters, as in Obama's case in New Mexico and Florida, such a candidate's chances would have been doomed.
While incitement and violence from right and left are equally evil, the latter has been rewarded with mainstream acceptance....
When Obama playfully greets pro-terror dictator Hugo Chavez and bows down to the Saudi king, while taking a hard line against America's democratic allies; when he awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who never tires of demonizing Jews and likening Israel to Nazi Germany, he confirms the concerns of everyone who warned about his alliances with extremists and terrorists last year. When his Justice Department blocks the case against New Black Panther Party thugs who violently intimidated voters on Election Day 2008, a green light is given to future criminal, racist violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which heroic Americans sacrificed their lives to create.
Pelosi, Friedman, and others are correct to have deep concern-concern that is shared across virtually the entire political spectrum-at gun-brandishing, Nazi and communist imagery, and racism by the rare lunatics who tarnish town hall meetings and tea party protests. But their outrage, and media coverage, is selective and breathtakingly biased.
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