Hatred from the Right

It didn't take long. On election night four students at North Carolina State University spray-painted "Shoot Obama" and "Kill the nigger" in a tunnel on campus. What happened when they were caught? Nothing. They were scolded. I guess it's okay to call for the assassination of the president elect. The right wing whackos were apoplectic when someone hung a Halloween mock-up of Palin from a tree in California(following the Obama hung in effigy in Ohio). But - Surprise! Surprise! - I haven't heard one word from the right condemning the vile call for murder at NCSU.

Yesterday I saw an incredible one-man play written by Mike Wiley, based on Tim Tyson's novel "Blood Done Call My Name". It was about the racist murder of a young black man in Oxford, NC.

In 1970.

While I was graduating from Brockton High School, people down here were murdering young black men, and getting acquitted.

In 2008, we have college students calling for the murder of a man elected president just because he happens to be 50% African American.

Things haven't changed that much. And they probalby won't. Sarah Palin stoked the fires of hatred with her bitter, name-calling condemnatory campaign. And for a core group of fanatics, that hatred will continue to smolder. Yesterday I heard Limbaugh refer to Obama's government as "The Lewinskyites".

Besides the obvious idiocy of such a characterization, the use of that term speaks of a mind so narrow and prejudiced that he can't even attempt to tolerate, let alone understand, anyone whose views are different from his own. His 'dittoheads' will certainly mimic his hatred.

This came a day after he condemned a defeated Republican Congressman for daring to say the Republican Party needed to broaden its base, reach out to Blacks and Hispanics.

"No we don't," Rush screamed. He ended by saying good riddance to this Republican, he was glad he was defeated.

Obama has created an atmosphere where millions of people now feel safe to accept each other in the hopes of moving forward, creating, as cliched as it sounds, a more loving and just society.

We have to hope that the knuckle-draggers will soon die out, or find small caves to hide in where they can rail at the shadows on the wall and think they're talking to the world.