The racists haven't taken very long to show themselves, anonymously of course, but they're blogging and posting and creating "false rumors [on] the Internet and right-wing media outlets -- including one recent assertion that Obama's wife Michelle has been caught on tape slurring white people." These racists cite "reports, by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh among others, that a videotape existed showing Michelle Obama using the derogatory term "whitey" in the couple's former church.... No such tape has surfaced despite frenzied speculation by right-wing pundits and blogs...." [quoted from online AFP News]
Obama's people have set up a website to respond to such rumors, including the rumor that he's actually a Muslim. This last, despite all the publicity about the problems his Christian minister has caused by putting mouth in motion before engaging brain.
The website is http://www.fightthesmears.com/, and it should allay earlier fears that Obama would not be able to stand up to the kinds of inane, racist, vicious attacks that are increasingly expected from extremists. He is standing up, and he's also replying in a calm, cool manner.
I really think the Rush Limbaughs of our country will be hurting John McCain by the unfounded religious and racist rumors they're spreading. Overwhelmingly, Americans are fair and decent, and I expect significant numbers will rally to Obama's side in this election, at least in part because of the vileness of the attacks. And the young people who came out in large numbers for the caucuses can only be further motivated to vote in November to strike back at the reactionaries who have begun these most recent attacks.
On an entirely diffferent election topic, one I did not highlight in the title of this post--mainly because the title was already too long, and this new topic doesn't lend itself to continued alliteration--a friend of mine emailed me with some concern about Jim Webb's past. Thank you. It was something that I was not aware of, and now am, but I still feel comfortable if Webb were to become the VP candidate. Nonetheless, what he said in 1979 would likely emerge, so let's deal with it now.
In 1979, Webb wrote in an article that women should not be enrolled in the military academies, that women should not/could not lead men, that women should not be in combat roles, but instead should be in behind-the-lines support roles. He didn't always phrase his oral comments quite so nicely. At one point, it was reported that he said something like (not an exact quote), "Being allowed to enroll in a military academy is a horny woman's dream."
George Allen brought all of this up when Webb challenged him (successfully over several days, we may remember) for the Senate in 2006. Webb has a clear record of recanting this position and wording long before Allen introduced them into the campaign. Ironically, and stupidly, Allen had more recently said publicly that women should not be allowed to enroll in Virginia Military Institute (VMI) because such a practice would "change the nature of the institution." I don't know what Allen was thinking when he brought up Webb's comments: that no one would look up Allen's past comments?
Webb candidly admitted that he would not have said such things in 1979 had he been "more mature." And his subsequent record in official positions (such as Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan) clearly shows a more enlightened Jim Webb.
If Webb were to be selected to be the VP candidate, and if this part of his past were to be brought up, I think the Democrats could use it to show that John McCain is looking to the past rather than the future, and that the Democrats are the candidates who can lead the country out of the morass that dubya and his allied Republicans have created.
-- triton --
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