Hit Chick

From the Dana Milbank column in today's WaPo: "Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said. "Boooo!" said the crowd. "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued. "Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

It doesn't take a genius to read the message here. This has been an undercurrent throughout the campaign--the Obama-is-a-Muslim lie, the emphasis on his middle name, McCain's ominously suggestive refrain of "who's the real Obama?", the not-so-subtle appeal to residual racism especially among working class Democrats. This is the end-game of the Atwater/Rove strategy of appealing to the primitive reptilian brain in the American voter.

But it took Sarah Palin to make the "Obama=terrorist" charge explicit. Look at the syntax in the quote: Who is the antecedent of "he"? Even allowing for Palin's minimal command of English, the ambiguity can't be inadvertent--not that the grammar really matters to the casual listener. This goes way beyond Willie Horton and is utterly despicable.

I hesitate even to articulate this thought, but my greatest fear is not that many voters will fall for the distraction (so far, the polls suggest that they aren't buying it). Rather, I fear that some racist nut job will hear this as coded approval to physically attack Obama, now that he's been officially branded by the Republican candidates as an Enemy of America. McCain and Palin are literally playing with fire here.

If this seems paranoid, just take a look at this photograph taken at a Palin rally. If that doesn't scare you,....